#there is like zero implication of this in the games but! i refuse to believe that the man who started a new industrial age with whale oil | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

realfinemood · 1 year ago

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Just a whole lot of babbling about my girl and her violent traumatized friends! Spoilers for the game, specifically the ending and a whole lot about Lae'zel's story and Astarion's romance, and also a bit about a squid.

[Did I romance Astarion this playthrough? Yes. Was it Brecca's most important relationship? Absolutely not.]

Lae'zel - Lae'zel was Brecca's best friend in game from the start, even if that start was having a sword pointed at her. But given the situation it was the objectively correct reaction to her so she didn't mind. Not only was Lae'zel a great fighter but seemed to already know a solution for the exact problem they were having? Perfect, sign her up. Even later on, when they seemed about to turn and Lae'zel came to kill her, Brecca was just impressed at her thought out plan, even if she's glad she convinced her to wait the night just in case.

(They've decided to never talk about how the second day knowing each other, Lae'zel went on about wanting to taste Brecca's sweat.)

Brecca had zero knowledge of Githyanki before meeting Lae'zel. But she trusted Lae'zel and went along with it, despite hating everything about the creche once they got there and agreeing with Astarion that the "cure" was absolutely going to be something like getting their heads cut off. [Getting a nat20 to beat the DC30 persuasion roll to convince Lae'zel to get out of the machine before it killed her was honestly the highlight of dice rolls the whole game.]

Brecca would've been wholely supportive of Lae'zel's new mission to take down Vlaakith on its own, but finding out they had been using a captured person's power this whole time made it her 100% on board the Free Orpheus plan. When it turned out they needed someone to turn into a mindflayer, Brecca was terrified Lae'zel would hate her for refusing to make that sacrifice herself - thankfully she didn't seem to blame her. Nothing could be more satisfying than Lae'zel killing the Emperor while Brecca was busy getting Orpheus to the brain. She hopes that when Lae'zel takes down Vlaakith, she takes what she learned traveling with them with her.

Wyll - For someone who has recently decided to be a better person but isn't 100% sure how to do that, Wyll was a shining beacon of How To Be A Good Person. In the beginning, Brecca definitely had him on a pedestal. But the more time she spent with him, the more she saw how being a hero meant sacrificing himself in ways that just weren't fair. She refused to let him chain himself to another pact to save his dad when there was clearly another way, and surprised that everyone else seemed to see it differently. When they went to find Ansur, she let Wyll take the lead as she certainly couldn't claim to be the hero when he was right there, and fully supported his decision to be the Blade of Avernus and help people on his own terms.

Astarion - Despite Astarion bitching and complaining about all her goodie goodie choices in the beginning, Brecca liked him in a "best friend who also annoys the hell out of you" way. She liked him because he's funny and good at shit she's not and yeah he's an asshole but still fought and had her back anyways and that was the important thing.

[The gnome slave comments were almost breakup material admittedly - my characters are either big gnome fans or gnomes themselves, take your racist nonsense elsewhere my guy.]

As for the romance itself, she's 2/2 on not realizing she was attracted until she was hit over the head with it. His lines are terrible, but they're at least so obvious even she can tell it's flirting. She definitely doesn't believe he liked her from the start, unless headbutting someone trying to slit your throat is romantic. She felt like something was off, and didn't like the implication that he was paying her back, but believed when he said it was just an excuse. When he finally explained that he was doing it for protection, the one thing she'd promised to do from the start, she didn't feel betrayed or manipulated. Just upset that he'd thought he had to pay with something she could've done without for something she was always going to do anyways.

When they finally confronted Cazador (something she kept putting off the more Astarion seemed interested in doing the ritual himself) he convinced him he could be the better person and set the 7000 free. She definitely didn't fail to persuade him and pissed him off by refusing to help, causing him to leave the party saying he hopes she dies screaming. After the world is saved, they (and Shadowheart) join them in the Underdark to help get them started in their new lives. And once that's started, they're off to find a way to let him walk in the sun again.

Shadowheart - Brecca took a long time to warm up to Shadowheart. The constant digs at Lae'zel in the beginning and the refusal to share anything about herself was a huge hurdle. But once they started going in the Shadowlands it made sense to bring her, and she started finding the actual person under there. Her amazingly terrible powers of persuasion failed her when they found the Nightsong, so she was extremely proud when Shadowheart decided on her own to not kill her. They grew closer after that and while Brecca doesn't know if she agrees with her choice to end her parents suffering, she plans on helping her start her new life and is welcome to stay with her and Astarion as long as she needs. [Shadowheart and Astarion both died during each other's final important fight and I like to believe they're close friends. As she never spoke up in the ending, I chose to believe she ran after Astarion while Brecca handled Karlach.]

Karlach - In another life, they don't get sick from almost transforming the night Karlach wants to talk at the fire. Or Karlach asks her to spend the night at the party before Astarion gets a chance to. It's probably for the best, as Brecca doesn't take not being able to fix her engine well, and takes Karlach's acceptance of dying even worse. She's beyond grateful that Wyll stepped up at the end and convinced her to go to Avernus with him, because helplessly watching Karlach die would've broken her.

Jaheira - They got off to a rough start, Brecca super not a fan of being told to go somewhere for safety and being restrained the first step in. But she got over it and Jaheira appreciated her jokes about her age (she wasn't actually trying! She's a halfling, a century is really long time!) and decisions that apparently reminded her of Minsc. Now she's happy to have a new elf grandma.

Gale - Poor Gale was in a different story from the start. Brecca smiled and nodded through his magic talk and long speeches, gave him shoes to eat when needed without complaint, and was down to fight Mystra for him because what the hell. What was intended as friendship apparently meant way more to Gale, resulting in an extremely awkward and confusing conversation about not telling him about Astarion. In the end, he left to find the crown with a confusing offer to let her be his Chosen if she ever came around to the Become a God plan. Because nothing says Chosen of the god of magic like a barbarian who knows one spell.

Halsin - Brecca genuinely isn't sure why Halsin apparently likes her so much. He's been a kidnapped damsel in distress twice and both times she's taken probably way longer than she should've to come get him. Also sure she likes tall people but he's like three times her size how would that even work.

Minsc - Brecca met Minsc way too late to have any real opinion on Jaheira's weird friend, other than confusion that he keeps insisting his hamster is talking even though she can speak with animals.

Emperor - [I the player made the Dream Visitor look like Brecca's d&d fiance. Brecca the bg3 character has not met said fiance, so has no emotional attachment to this form.]

Brecca was highly suspect of having a random person talking in their heads, telling them to eat the tadpoles when they were trying to get rid of the one they already had. But they at least seemed to be helping at the moment so she tolerated it right up until the moment she learned who they really were.

It wasn't even that he was a mindflayer - she likes Omeluum! It was he was using a captured person's power. It was the constant "I've never lied to you" while actively hiding information. It was that she was always supposed to trust without questioning, meanwhile the one time she tried to keep something private he forcibly went through her mind to find it. Nothing he showed her about Stelmane was a shock, and when he couldn't wait two seconds to see if Orpheus would help them and instead immediately turned to join the brain, she couldn't say she was surprised. Just glad that she never has to hear his voice in her head again.

#lol i don't expect anyone to actually read this whole thing #but i had a lot of time to waste waiting for my car to be worked on #so enjoy #.gaming #baldur's gate 3 #oc: brecca

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keysmashingfantasies · 2 years ago

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Hi hi. I’m not sure if you do request like this and this isn’t detailed or anything so I get if you don’t want to but like could I request something smut chishiya? Maybe him and reader are friends and get into an argument about their feelings for each other and they end up having really romantic love making and confess to each other or something. Probably makes like zero sense sorry.

i do requests like this, yes! just bear with me because i am not the most skilled smut writer but i am absolutely open to writing it, ask away! and it makes perfect sense, don't worry! also, i assumed you wanted fem!bodied reader but since you didn't specify, i didn't. so hopefully i think everyone can read. this is so fucking long i'm sorry. was it good? i don't think so, no. is it the best i could do? absolutely. enjoy!

ok, content warning/this fic contains: sexy times, non descriptive penetrative sex as a way to keep this as inclusive as possible, no body descriptions for reader, unprotected sex (not good! don't do this!), chishiya being vulnerable (or, as the kids call it, a bit subby), a smidge of angst at the beginning, probably kind of shitty aftercare bc i don't know how and i'm going off of vibes. absolutely not proofread so most likely grammar mistakes.

MINORS DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS POST OR I'LL CALL YOUR MOM!!!

"What do you mean? I'm being careless by talking to people?", you exclaimed. Chishiya was being more and more unreasonable lately. You knew he thought you were gullible and naive, and you suspected that's why he decided to get closer to you; who'd suspect you, after all? You weren't all that wide eyed ingenue, you just believed that people could still be good in this world. Kuina shared the same belief, and he wasn't nagging on her like he did with you.

"Of course you can! But not so much to make yourself vulnerable to threats! What are you doing, cozying up to someone you don't even know during a game?", his tone raised the slightest bit, what was already a lot for Chishiya. He may have been acting unreasonably but he knew what he was saying had reason. Chishiya had feelings for you, and once he got to know you the desire to protect you only grew. He knew that you were selfless to the point of bordering stupidity, and would sacrifice yourself for someone. What made Chishiya's heart clench even more is that you'd sacrifice for him given the chance. Without even thinking. The flame of his anger was fanned at the thought that someone may have used your good will to trick you into dying in their place if he wasn't around.

"I wasn't cozying up! I was talking to a teammate! On a game of clubs! You know, one of those we depend on other people to live?", you said, exasperated. You took a calming breath and sighed. "You know what, think what you want of me. I'm tired, I don't want to fight", you started to pace around, something you often did to release anxious energy after a game.

"We're not fighting. We're having a conversation", Chishiya deadpanned, raising his eyebrows when you turned to look at him.

"A conversation of you laying it thick the implication that I'm some dumb thing with stars in my eyes? That I can let anyone trick me into sacrifice?", you said, and his eyes darted across the room, avoiding your eyes. Red-handed. "Chishiya, listen to me", you sat besides him, taking his hand in yours. "I may still be a bit too hopeful of people sometimes. Everyone copes in their own way, right?", you earned yourself a dry chuckle. "But I am hopeful because of what I've seen. Yeah, there's death and sadness and betrayal but there's good things. Friendship and love. For every bad person there's a few good ones, I truly believe that. And don't worry about me. You and Kuina drilled in my brain to be street smart", you smiled. Now it was your turn to avoid his eyes. "The only person in this entire world that can trick me is you, Chishiya. I trust you wholeheartedly", you whispered, clenching his hand in yours tight but still refusing to turn your warm face towards his. He was your lifeline but made you mortified at the same time.

"I don't think you're dumb. I'm sorry if I came across that way. I wouldn't have made an ally out of you if I didn't trust your abilities. And... I wouldn't made a friend out of you if I thought you're stupid. I just didn't want to lose you, that's all", he said. "I trust you too. Wholeheartedly", he said, giving you one of his Monalisa smiles. Sutil enough he may not even be smiling at all.

"Not in the way I trust you. Not by far", you said, finally managing to gather yourself enough to look at him. You may die at any point, Chishiya was kind enough to remind you. So what if he didn't love you back? You had the right to say it and he had the right to know. Even if he scolded you for wearing your heart on your sleeve. Even if he betrayed you.

"Why do you say that?", he asked, frowning. Did you know believe him? After all this time, he thought he was opening up to you. That you saw something more inside of him, the optimism, the sliver of hope he kept hidden for emergencies and you.

"Because I love you. And I trust you. Blindly", you said after being in silence for a while, and the atmosphere of the room shifted. You could feel the hairs in your body standing in attention, the room felt colder, the air felt heavy and sticky when you breathed in and you thought that if you took a deep breath like you've been dying to, you'd choke. You could hear a pin drop. And Chishiya was still as a statue.

It happened in a blink of an eye. Chishiya was tense, his lips pressed against yours and shoulders almost up to his ears, like someone had pushed him into you and he was still trying to process it. You had your eyes wide open, looking around the room, hands up like someone was pointing a gun at you, not knowing where to place them. For a few seconds it was like this, until something clicked. Chishiya kissed you. Chishiya was kissing you. You parted for a second before looking into each other's eyes, bewildered like you had been possessed. And then you kissed him.

This was much more like an actual kiss. It was soft, slow, steady. You cupped his face between your hands and got up on your knees to get closer to him, his hands snaking their way up to your waist. Soon enough, you had to breathe, breaking apart just enough for your mouths to disconnect but staying close. Neither of you thought you could let each other go after what you knew it was about to transpire.

"Chishiya... I...", you were breathless, you brain had turned to mush and you couldn't speak, and Chishiya took the opportunity to kiss you yet again.

You could've been kissing for ages. The games might've been over, everyone dead, the land completely taken over by vegetation at this point. But you were still kissing Chishiya, slow and deep, melting and molding into his arms, straddling his lap. Not letting your hands leave him not for a second, as he did with you. Your hands were on his face, his on your waist. His hands moved up your back, yours into his hair. Your hands on his chest, his in yours.

The kisses started growing hot and sloppy. You needed each other bad. So when Chishiya pulled apart to catch his breath and you couldn't stay away from him, you started to kiss down his neck, hands pulling off his hoodie off like it was offending you, desperately mouthing at the parts of his collarbones and chest not covered by his shirt. And the sounds were driving you insane. The little sighs and moans made you want to beg him to fuck you already but you decided to contain yourself. You wanted him to feel appreciated. Loved.

"Ah... That's good", he whispered, and when you parted from his neck to see his head thrown back, his mouth slightly opened, eyes half lidded like he was intoxicated, you couldn't help but to slip your tongue into his mouth yet again, shifting your hips against his slightly, making you both moan in each other's mouths. "Can I undress you?", he asked between pecks on your lips, and you nodded so hard you made yourself dizzy. "No, no. I need to hear you say it", he said, stopping to look at you looking at him. How you were still bashful at a situation like this he couldn't figure out for the life of him, but he gave you a low chuckle when you hid your face in his neck, only to shiver after feeling your teeth pressed against his pulse point. If the room wasn't so quiet he wouldn't be able to hear the small "Please, Chishiya, undress me" that followed.

His hands were fast as they were precise and in no time you were fully naked in his lap, kissing him like your life depended on it. Your hands made your way down his chest, getting to the hem and making their way up again, now under the fabric, lifting it up and off of his torso, breaking the kiss just long enough to pull it over his head.

You proceeded to kiss every newly discovered inch of his warm skin. From his fingertips, up his arms, his shoulders, nipping and sucking and licking down his chest, over his sensitive nipples, down his stomach and the soft trail of hair that dissapeared under the waistband of his pants.

"Y/N...", he sighed, hand coming up under your chin to pull you off of obsessively mouthing him over his pants. "Y/N...", he sighed yet again when you came up, making eye contact with him and giving him a peck on the lips.

"Can I finish undressing you, Chishiya? Please?", you were desperate, and Chishiya hissed at the thought of what was to come. How could he hold back when you were so sweet, so beautiful, so eager, looking at him like he painted the sky midnight blue and hung the moon and stars up there?

"Yes. Yes, please", he breathed. You touched your forehead to his, fiddling with the ties of his loose pants. Meanwhile, he pressed two of his fingers to your lips, slowly but surely shoving them inside your warm and wet mouth. As you sucked them, you started to pull his pants and underwear down his slim hips, and he lifted his hips to aid you.

Soon enough, you were both naked, you straddling his thighs. There was nothing in between you anymore. He took his fingers off of your mouth as you looked down to take him in, all the parts hidden that you'd been fantasizing about. His chest with a bit of hair, now covered in red splotches from your sucking, his stomach and happy trail covered in love bites, his pale hairy legs, his cock that now slapped against his stomach, not too long but just enough to make your mouth water, with a leaking pink tip, girthy and veiny, nestled in his pubes, his balls hanging low, filled with cum.

"Chishiya, you're so beautiful", you moaned in pure agony. His body, the way he was looking up at you so reverently; he looked like an angel. He wasted no time in using his fingers lubed by your spit to start prepping you, carefully but firmly shoving them inside of you, finger fucking you in efforts to find that sweet spot inside of you.

"You're beautiful too. Ah, that's it, take my fingers inside you", he moaned as you started to move your hips in tandem with his hand. You slowly started to play with his balls, earning yourself a low groan.

"Chishiya. Chishiya", you moaned, convulsing when he managed to graze what he was looking for. "I'm going to- ah! Kiss me, please", he placed his hand in the back of your neck and pulled you to him, his tongue messily meeting yours while you mewled into his mouth and you shivered from your orgasm.

You only parted after you finished riding out your orgasm, after your lungs were burning, and you felt weak and feverish. You looked into his eyes for a little while and Chishiya opened his mouth to speak, only to come up with nothing but shallow gasps and a smile. His heart jumped when you smiled back.

"Chishiya, make love to me, please", he'd think you were in pain if it wasn't your smile. The way you were looking at him.

"Of course", he said, laying you down on the floor on your back, parting your knees, taking a moment to just look at you, making you feel shy. "You're so gorgeous. Are you ready for me?", he asked.

"Yes!", you moaned. You couldn't believe this was happening. Not in the Borderlands of all places.

Slowly, he started to put it inside of you, and the stretch of him was amazing. You blindly reached for one of his hands that was bracketing your head, him holding the back of it to his lips for a second before continuing.

"Almost there. Are you ok? Fuck. Does it hurt?", he said. He wanted nothing more than to fuck you into the floor but he wanted to be gentle with you. Wanted to see you fall apart slowly for him.

"Ah... You're amazing. It feels amazing", you sighed, dreamily; you never felt so full in your entire life, it was an all encompassing feeling, you couldn't do anything but to lay there and feel him inside you. Your eyes meeting his with another dazzling smile, and he almost came on the spot.

"Ah, ah!", he bottomed out inside of you and he couldn't believe how warm and wet you were. "So good...", he started to grind his hips into yours, not really pulling out. He couldn't pull away from you right now, not when you felt so good.

The both of you were in a frenzy, hips grinding into each other desperately, the both of you sweaty and moaning. One of you hands was tightly clasped in one of Chishiya's, the other with their nails deep into the skin of his shoulder, the other hand of Chishiya was gripping your tigh, his arm wrapped around it. Your mouth was open in ecstacy, moaning like an animal in heat. Chishiya didn't know where to place his mouth. Dragging across yours, on your neck, your shoulders, your collarbones, down your chest.

"Chishiya, Chishiya, Chishiya", you wanted to let him know you were about to cum, but your mind was numb and the only thing you could say was his name over and over.

"Are you close?", he breathed out and you nodded feverishly. "Me too. Will you cum with me?", he moaned and it was the most beautiful sound you heard in your life. You didn't stand a chance, clenching around him with a desperate cry of his name while he pressed his hips to yours, pumping you full of his cum.

It felt like you both were locked together, standing still against each other like a statue for ages. You didn't know how long until your soul returned to your body but when it did, you knew yours and his were intertwined. "Hi", you breathed, and he smiled. Not a quirk of his lips, a full fledged smile, teeth and all. "I should clean you up", he said, using his shirt to clean the cum seeping out of you, being mindful of how sensitive you were. "Hurts?", he asked. "No, I'm fine", you said. After dressing you and himself, discarding the shirt and zipping his hoodie with nothing underneath, he held you to his chest.

"I believe there's good in this world too", he said.

"Hm?", you asked, sleepy, your cheek pressed against his chest, with his arms around you.

"I believe there's good in the world too. Maybe less than you but I do. Believe that there's good out there. I'll go back with you, if we get lost I'll find you. And then I'll make love to you again, and hold you close, to remember that there's good in the real world too", he said. "I love you too", he said, squeezing you to him.

#chishiya #shuntaro chishiya x reader #chishiya x reader #chishiya x male reader #alice in borderland chishiya #alice in borderland imagine #alice in borderland x reader #aib x reader

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tarajenkins · 5 years ago

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Please no more Square, I am at my (character) limit lmao

"The Light will not be denied!"

I really do still wonder how anyone who played through ShB could reach the conclusion that a child with no Blessing Of Light ever stood a chance against the will of a Lightwarden. And not just any child--a child the Ascians intended to use as a doorstop to prevent the First from being destroyed before the Rejoining could happen, a child whose own trusted parental figure was willing to gaslight and manipulate them for the sake of their own power. A child whose behavior would absolutely need to fit a certain mold to achieve their ends.

The Light corruption of a Sin Eater is confirmed by Halric's arc to be a lot like Tempering. Repeatedly Tempering someone, like Loonh Gah's mother in the Amalj'aa questchain, destroys their sanity. Emet-Selch's own dialogue up there confirms that the Warden essences in the WoL would not only drive them to madness, but violence. Vauthry had the essence of a Lightwarden forced into him before he was even born, and he had no higher power to protect him.

Selch puts it plainly: the corruption of a Lightwarden is absolute in time, even for the WoL. I have yet to hear a good reason why Vauthry’s corruption would have been the sole exception to this rule. The “half Sin Eater” bit is brought up sometimes, but that is just buying into the lies his father told. Vauthry was already an entirely Hume infant. He was never “half” anything. He was already complete. He was corrupted. Tempered, according to Halric’s arc--blaming him for not fighting it is like blaming Thancred for the Waking Sands. It’s not a thing anyone can fight.

There’s also Yoshi-P asking players to ask themselves if Vauthry was really a friend of the Sin Eaters, or was he being controlled by someone.

(On a side note, I could have sworn it was stated the Ascians can't handle Light well, or at all? How did Emet-Selch even do that in the first place? Bad Writing(tm) \o/)

Silence Is Golden:

In a world where everyone rightfully fears Sin Eaters, a world where Eulmorans had fought them and died to them for decades, where those corrupted by fallen Sin Eaters have to be put to death before turning themselves--how would the mayor of Eulmore even explain his son's "gift"? Explain his son having a second, Sin Eater face in his chest? Explain that he allowed his child to be corrupted by a rando in a cloak, with no input from his wife? How did he keep her silent? Besides Square not bothering to give her dialogue, of course.

(Also, there was at least one other Minifilia in Vauthry's lifetime. The Minis all fought for Eulmore, as per Moren's book. How did they miss the Lightwarden now residing in Mr. Mayor's child? Did Hydaelyn know?)

It's such poor writing on Square's part to have left the disturbing Echo of how Emet-Selch “made” Vauthry as a footnote, and even moreso to have Wrenden claim in the hilariously contradictory patch 5.1 that Vauthry's father was the "good old days" of Eulmore. A man that would agree to let that be done to his own wife and child, a man who vocalized such disregard for his own peoples' lives, that was the good old days, really? The mayor who had "unrest" and detractors "stirring up the citizenry"? THAT mayor?

This is how far the writers were willing to go to dehumanize a fat man who had absolutely no consent or control in his “destiny”. And, speaking of dehumanizing--

--Square couldn't be arsed to treat Vauthry's mother like a character and not a convenient and silent womb, so we have no idea what happened to her. (My money is still on the Obscenity theory.) But since Vauthry only mentioned "Father", it sounds like the mayor raised him alone.

What did Former Mayor do when his son had challenging questions about his father’s plans for him, or when the child balked at the answers given? How did he explain whatever happened to his wife? Just how much did "Father" have to manipulate that child's world to maintain the lies?

It’s strongly implied Former Mayor kept his son in a state of isolation where neither his word nor the Ascians' will could be questioned until the child was thoroughly brainwashed to believe, and there would be no questions then. Whether intended by Square or not, Vauthry does display many signs of an adult who suffered extreme isolation as a child.

An entire childhood, with his likely only trusted source of knowledge and solace being someone who was grooming him for a power grab--and all the while, he can’t escape the presence of a creature inside him that drives mortals mad.

One of “Father’s” directives stands out in particular between the lines during ShB, though we don’t know how it came about originally:

Don’t tell anyone what you really are.

Even though Vauthry was given a good reason “why he was born as man and sin eater both", it still leaves the impression he was born because Sin Eaters are bad, and Vauthry needed to stop them from doing bad things--plus hush, don’t tell, people would find his existence bad if they knew the truth of it. Kids ask questions. Kids wonder. Feeling like an outsider hurts, let alone an outsider made of the same stuff that everyone fears. If Sin Eaters are monsters, then what was he?

The fact Vauthry asked his father why was he born that way in the first place indicates the child instinctively felt there was something wrong.

The in-game dialogues appear to back this up. Although Vauthry's "heritage" was supposed to be this amazing thing, the true nature of it was instead lied about and kept hidden his entire life. Seems unusual for a guy supposedly convinced that he is “perfection”, doesn’t it? The fact that Eulmorans never once referred to Vauthry as "half Sin Eater" or a "God" during twenty years of his rule, the fact he only mentioned it himself before the Warden was about to claim him entirely; all well and good his father obviously invented some lie to placate the masses (“born with miraculous and convenient power” was all it took), but how did maintaining that lie, hiding who he really was, read to Vauthry all those years?

During ShB, he still seemed to keep to the isolation he likely always knew. He never left that room. The citizens came to him when they wanted something, but it was never implied or shown he sought social contact on his own. Nothing was scaled to him, utensils, glasses, plates, etc.--as though he refused to single himself out as different from everyone else.

He called the Lightwarden’s awakening a “trial” to be embraced during Crown Of The Immaculate. Odd that someone supposedly convinced of his godhood would ever think he needed testing--but it makes perfect sense in the context of someone who always felt they needed to prove that they were worthwhile.

He was proud of his power to protect his people, and proud of the paradise he built for them, but he didn’t want Alphinaud to paint a picture of him, he wanted a painting of the city. There were zero paintings or other monuments to himself in Eulmore. Lot of people in the fanbase speak of him being vain, yet he seemed to not want to be seen unless he had to be--almost as though, even toward the end, even through all the bluster, he still read being “half Sin Eater” as wrong.

With that in mind, there didn’t seem to be much evidence to even tell Vauthry he was born because he was wanted. He was born because his ability was needed. If not for his father’s ambition, however sweetly that may have been disguised, then to defend Eulmore against the monsters he was a part of. His ability was needed, not even him specifically--and the Eulmorans, with all their wishes and dreams to be fulfilled, could easily enforce the belief on the child that who he was didn’t matter, what he may want did not matter, only what he could do for others mattered. And what he did for them wouldn’t matter if they knew the truth of him. What a terrible, conditional ”love”. It could explain why he was so cynical about human nature. (Even though his predictions about human nature in the face of a dying world 110% came to pass in the Black Rose timeline. 6_9 gg G’raha)

Yet despite all this, Vauthry needed to be convinced he was doing good for the shattered world. He needed to be convinced what he was doing was right, despite having power enough to not care. If Amaurot was Utopia, then Eulmore reminded me very much of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Omelas--a paradise, at the cost of one child’s eternal suffering.

Food For Thought (and Bad Writing(tm)):

A lot of people have a boner for the cannibalism implications of meol despite the bad math behind it, but fucking meol, how does it work?

Sin eating historically was to cleanse one who has passed on of their earthly sins that they may find peace in the afterlife--this was done in different ways by different people, but one of the best known methods was ritualistically baking the sins of the dead into bread or cakes and consuming it. Yoshi-P has even said he thought of meol as a sweet bread. Quest text from the Unfulfilled Forager in Gate Town further backs up that meol is not meat-based:

(By the way, nothing was keeping this man from hunting a shit-ton of meat that was literally within walking distance.)

It suggests Vauthry could have been taught that by eating the sins of the world, a.k.a. Sin Eaters, a.k.a. meol (which in the Japanese version, was something he was apparently afraid of doing?) --he was saving someone’s soul.

“And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. Amen.”

In reality, there would be a point Mr. Mayor would not know how to feed the Warden forced on his child. Humes don't have a natural method of feeding on "living aether", yet the Warden would not reach its full potency without it. Making meol could either involve an instinctive act on the Warden’s part, or it was taught--and that seems very much beyond his father’s area of expertise, OR Vauthry himself, so I’d almost wonder if the Ascians had a part in it. But like mixing medicine in a favorite food, theoretically, the aether provided by meol would slowly build up. And as the Warden grew in power, it would need more, and more. It would explain that final “powerup” before Mt. Gulg.

Provided Sin Eaters have any living aether left. They never explained that bit. Sin Eaters have no bones, no blood, no meat, nothing but Light. We saw enough of them dissipate into the air, including in cutscenes. Even Tesleen, very recently turned, faded. There is nothing else to them but Light...and there should be nothing left but that “blank perfection”, the Eater would have ate the rest? So where is the “living aether” they require to survive?

Fresh-sliced sneater wing, empty as the plotholes of this arc.

I could buy him turning people into Eaters directly, but then what was the point of the bread?

That’s right folks, meol still doesn't make sense, surprise! Also: so many people in one city allegedly being "disappeared" over twenty years, from a stagnant population, to “feed” everyone every day--yet no panic, not so much as a hushed whisper about it? Eulmore is supposed to be the safest place anywhere -- no idea how it could gain that reputation with that theory. Square wrote Eulmore like it existed in a vacuum, no one knowing no one. The lack of depth is still jarring, three playthroughs later. Only one unreliable narrator of an NPC (Thoarich) even hinted this theory, to boot.

Side note I thought was strange: you never see any of the normal food in Vauthry’s chamber actually eaten, it’s all untouched. I wonder if the Warden somehow eventually affected his ability to tolerate the food a Hume would normally eat.

That said, his “mind control” of the populace was laughably ineffective, so I wonder what even was the point of feeding them meol. Perhaps it was again the Lightwarden instinct to create more of its own kind. Nothing else seems to fit. “Oh no, this Eulmoran is staggering randomly around, muttering about Vauthry! How can we survive this onslaught?” Yyyyeah no, lol. Alphinaud confirmed the Eulmorans were acting of their own free will until that final showdown, so the mind control seemed to be a panic move--I wonder if it was even took conscious effort at that point, or just another instinctive SOS from the Warden. Given his father’s trouble with the smallfolk, I have to wonder if it was Former Mayor’s idea, if there was a real reason behind it. Not a reason that would make good sense, but nothing in this arc does make good sense, so.

The thing is, meol was an optional dish. No one was forced to eat it. So Vauthry must not have been relying on controlling or turning anyone.

But despite the fact meol defies their own game logic, Square really did seem to relish hinting at the dehumanizing, Austin Powers “haha fat guy eats people” trope anyway, and seriously. They could do better than that--I hoped they’d BE better than that. But here we are, the company that is supposed to go so hard against harassment takes an easy target and encourages a very specific negative response to it. This is the reason I believe Eulmore was such an inconsistent arc--they almost entirely depended on Vauthry’s appearance to carry the weak narrative, explaining very lttle of his actual motivations because that would ruin their weak-ass “gotcha” that he was the Lightwarden of Kholusia. Of course he’d be evil, just look at him! Right guys? Look! He’s fat!

Just as they used nothing but thicc’qotes in the trailer to try establishing the evils in Eulmore. Thicc’qotes eating fresh fruit whilst having pleasant conversation is the root of it all in Square’s eye; not a noblewoman who tried to have her maidservant murdered, not the nobleman who pushed his bodyguard over the rails, or even that asshole on the balcony laughing about splitting someone’s head like a melon. No, fatness is the real wickedness. Square was full of shit for this one and it shows when looked at with even a little critical thought. I don’t know what I expected of someone who requested a human “Jabba The Hutt” to be the last-minute midboss, someone who looked at a heavier Lakshmi and said “that’s not cute”, or a jackass who told a cosplayer they needed to lose weight onstage at FanFest 2014.

Even more disappointing? All these questions here, all these inconsistencies? For the majority of the playerbase, “he’s fat” was good enough. The Ascians get a million thoughtful theories. One of their victims? The playerbase thinks he manifested from the womb as you see him in game. They don’t stop to think of what it implied, to be born corrupted and groomed as a tool not only for Ascians, but his own father. They avoid the fact the fandom darling directly violated a woman and child’s bodily autonomy even as they insist on Vauthry taking absolute 100% responsibility for everything he was made specifically to do. And there’s just one difference between him and literally every other villain in this game, aside from the fact he had no choice. Yeah. As much as some players hate to hear it, if Vauthry had swapped models with the fandom darling, we wouldn’t be hearing justifications for mass murder/dictatorships/skeevy noncon. We would definitely be hearing how Vauthry was used, though--and how tragic his story is.

Some players bring up Dulia-Chai as though she somehow counters all the bodyshaming bullshit elsewhere. It doesn’t. She was still in place along with all the other thicc’qotes as Square’s fucked-up shorthand for excess and indolence. I had to learn she kept books for the Stoneworks in optional dialogue. Maybe if she didn’t talk about cakes and such so much, but I mean, that’s what fat people do, right?

So if you’re laughing at fat men, we fat women know you’re actually laughing at us, too. Git gud or stop embarrassing yourselves.

“Tyranny”, aka you keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means:

Whatever the Ascians did to make sure Vauthry’s "Ascension" was a time-release event, the "madness and fury" clearly had taken him when we met him in Shadowbringers. Punishments for those having broken the laws of the city changed from exile into vicious death sentences. Suddenly the God talk, where not even Alphinaud had heard that. It really makes a case that Vauthry was slowly declining into madness the longer he was exposed to the Warden--in fact, Thancred sort of confirms it, during the trailer: “This town certainly has changed, but not at all for the better.” He was only on The First for five years.

Vauthry likely had no introspective dialogues because much of who he actually had been was already gone, and the player is left with his remaining drive to do “good” and “justify your existence” wrapped around the instincts of a Lightwarden.

Yet a lot of things remain that really contradict the "bones of the poor" narrative the writers were trying to push about the city, and many times I felt a real disconnect between what our party was saying and what Eulmore was actually doing. A lot of it implies that, despite the Warden utterly subverting Vauthry as per the hard rules of Tempering, there was benevolence at work, once. The Minstreling Wanderer said that he could not say whether Vauthry was wicked in his youth, and I take this as a sign he was not.

First off, let’s just get this out of the way: The Crystarium also expected you to work for the city in some form if you were expecting to stay there.

”Layabouts”: a people who were the main line of defense against the Sin Eaters for all The First for eighty years, until the futility of it, and all the loss, broke their spirits entirely. Just another sample of how Square intended Eulmore be shown as fat=lazy, despite their own lore--until Square was lazy themselves and didn’t finish the thicc’qote models so Eulmore would be exclusively fat bodies as shown in the trailer.

The narrative often fudged with writer omnipotence regarding the protagonists, pressing to cast Eulmore in a negative light because they’d given up hope, even though loss is so important in excusing the Ascians’ actions. Our party had the WoL, whom they knew not only had a good chance of defeating Lightwardens, but G’raha seemed to know the WoL could contain them. Your average native inhabitant of the First would not be far off the mark feeling hopeless about the world, though, because they didn’t know about these extraordinary circumstances. Most of their oceans were lost in the Flood, and that in itself, realistically, is a death sentence. It’s all well and good G’raha was so perky and hopeful, and all well and good the game contrived a convenient deus ex machina to fix the issue (they never really addressed the issue anyway), but none of the locals could know any of this. I can see why Eulmore would think the Scions were full of shit, because for 80 years after the Flood, Eulmore tried to stop the Sin Eaters and could not. Honestly, I expected more sympathy for the Eulmorans, because they had been the front line for so long and lost so much. But lol fatties amirite?

Now, Square tried to dabble in many other Enlightened Social Commentaries with Eulmore, but immediately contradicted themselves so many times I was constantly asking myself why Alphinaud was being so goddamn extra dramatic. Gate Town/The Derelicts:

Not at Eulmore’s hand, Alphinaud honey, you can’t solo farms or communities. The people who remained behind were borked over by the ones who left. What are you even trying to say here, Square, help me out. Generosity--”largesse”-- is bad? Abandoning what you have, all others be damned, for something you were never given a promise of receiving....good? Sympathetic? Seriously, what is your point here, Square? How does this equal Eulmore being malicious? How does this not make the bulk of Gate Town hopefuls a bunch of dipshits? Wright is in sight from Gate Town, but no one ever thought going there might be better?

If Square meant for Eulmore to seem a prison for the “poor”, they did a shitty job of that, considering: 1) A big point about Gate Town was that the people staying there left viable homes, farms, and communities for a chance at getting in, a chance that was never guaranteed by anyone, and they refused any alternatives Alphinaud offered them, plus

2) No one was keeping anyone from leaving if they wanted to. No guards, no masked vigilantes, no rando singing Hotel California in your ear.

So ruthless a prison, there were not only invisible guards holding you against your will, there was an Amarokeep waiting in the Derelicts to whisk you away for 70 gil so you can pretend to make a daring escape, straight to the freebie Amaro that will take you to The Crystarium. Tell your friends! Tell Alphinaud! He will literally buy anything this expac.

- “Young Kai-Shirr” getting into Eulmore was never a “matter of life or death”, and I can’t tell if that was Alphinaud being pretentious again or the writing was just that bad. Kai-Shirr was offered work at the Crystarium and he refused it, “it has to be Eulmore”. How is that on anyone but him? (Plus why does no one ever question Kai-Shirr’s complete lack of caring for why Alphinaud wanted in, if that was true? Was Kai-Shirr then not dooming Alph to “death” instead when he robbed him? That’s not very cash money of him.)

This isn’t “life or death” either.

Neither is this.

Nnnno.

Considering Stilltide reported they have fish for all, and Wright’s trouble was not enough people, this is not only not “life or death”, but fucking creepy. Hopefully this better illustrates my confusion of what we were being told vs. what we were being shown in Gate Town/The Derelicts. d( ᐖ )

- The citizens In Gate Town/The Derelicts were not at the mercy of a "contest" to be let in. It was shown to be literally a help wanted board with jesters, and the “contest” was “do you have this certain skill someone is looking to hire”. I guess the Crystarium will hire a fishmonger to do the work of a chirurgeon or something?

The jongleurs were otherwise just "rule of cool", I guess--although the significant look the Red gave us, followed soon after by Emet-Selch’s lurking outside the Offer, made me wonder if they were not acting as monitors on Vauthry for the Ascians.

- There was at least one person in the Derelicts from the Crystarium, looking to make a quick gil on the extravagant “refuse” of the city, and several locals were doing the same. I guess those “layabouts” inside the city had their uses after all, Katliss.

- Meol was not the only food given to those outside the city. Produce and such that was not “pretty” enough for the fussy free citizenry was distributed to those camping the outskirts.

I’d have expected a “tyrant” to let that produce rot. Catty in Stilltide confirmed there was enough fish for everyone living there, and Zia-Bostt above seems to back that up. Game in the field was also aplenty even in terms of map mechanics--this was not some form of forced famine to hold the smallfolk in a state of dependence. Eulmore was still paying the villages for produce.

So much for the exploitation of big, bad Eulmore!

Again, Alphinaud himself bemoaned how the people were there of their own choice, and how they refused any and all alternatives he presented them with. The people in Gate Town wanted to wait for Eulmore, they left their own homes and farms freely for Eulmore, screwing over their neighbors in the process--and that is not Vauthry’s fault, that is on them?

Hurricane Florence left my husband and I homeless a while. You do not fucking pass up sure shelter and work and food to wait instead for a nebulous chance at Hollywood or Las Vegas--and if you do, that’s all your own tomfoolery, that’s not “injustice”, no BONES OF THE POOR required. It’s common sense, Square, goddamn lol

The Free Citizenry:

- The rich would not be permitted into the city if they did not give up their wealth for the benefit of all living there. This was a condition for the rich only. There is zero indication those funds were being put into Vauthry's pocket; it ran the city, and both free and bonded enjoyed the results (there seemed far more bonded residents in Eulmore than free, to boot.). There's a policy that would never fly in at least two allied citystates, lol.

It raises the question, if Wrenden and Former Mayor were so damn equitable, how were there even rich to begin with? There’s an old noble in Vauthry’s Eulmore who apparently does not know how to tie his shoes without a servant--a.k.a., the idle rich existed before Vauthry even came into power. The dialogue of Vauthry’s father also made it seem that these were systems in place long before he his son was even born -- except Vauthry’s system did not allow their hoarding of wealth, and distributed it instead to the benefit of everyone in the city. It was also a system that was so satisfactory, both free and bonded citizens became loudly dissatisfied after he was gone.

- The rich were the only ones guaranteed “Ascension”, and if you want to call that a perk I’m going to assume it’s because the entire system relied on their dosh--technically, they already did their “work” for the city. (”Buying a stairway to Heaven”, as it were.) So much for those "bones of the poor", Alph. Statistically, if bones built Eulmore, it was the bones of the rich.

Until Gaia, Ascension was only mentioned twice, but again, no real context was given. (jfc Square, we shouldn't have to buy an overpriced lorebook for this.) First time was the Weeping Warbler chain. Going by the quest dialogue, it sounded very much like something offered as mercy to terminal illness or otherwise impending death, as the Warbler's creepy patron lamented how he almost wished he could hasten his own to join her (btw, the right answer to that poor girl's fear that she'd be a burden more than a treasure was "YOU ARE MORE THAN YOUR VOICE”, asshole. >:| ). Players at the time were legit “oh that poor old man, she’s like his daughter :CCCCC” Ahahaha oh my sweet summer children

Either way, "Ascension” was definitely implied to be entirely voluntary. It was implied there were even rules and conditions to be granted it. And Vauthry did not seem to push anyone towards the idea, it was just there. (If it was for terminal illness, though, consider the following: Thoarich seemed confident the Warbler would live, but may lose her voice. If you have to be terminal to be Ascended, ironically Vauthry may have refused her patron's request.) The second mention was from Vauthry himself, for his “trial” when the Lightwarden awakened--so he certainly, tragically, believed what he claimed it was. The Bonded Residents:

- Even at his worst, there is no indication that the free citizens were encouraged by Vauthry to abuse their workers; in fact, the Amiable Maiden and her Ardent Attendant implied heavily that appreciation and respect for one's bonded was the ideal that was pushed by Eulmore, that "love for one's fellow man".

At no time were the bonded residents “slaves” (a new accusation from Twitter). They were “bonded” to the patrons who hired them by a work contract, and they sought those jobs willingly. No one kept them from leaving Gate Town, only kept them from getting in without a work arrangement--again, a prerequisite the Crystarium also had according to Katliss. The bonded residents were paid, and apparently paid well.

As the WoL, we were also bonded to the Chais, and were able to come and go later. It was like the writers knew they needed to sit the fence so the free citizens would be redeemable enough to help with the immersion-breaking giant Talos plot later, and so never pushed Eulmore to the evils they talked about but never showed--leaving behind the most disconnected, self-sabotaging arc I’ve ever seen from this MMO.

An evil slaveowner at work.

Alphinaud rewarded for being an agreeable yet melodramatic young boy.

- The bonded we met who fled Eulmore had fled their patrons, not Vauthry himself--even the Warbler thought Vauthry a “great man”. No one in Eulmore feared him.

- Tristol’s “grave sin” to be patronless and penniless was contradicted by Fathana, whose patron had died some time ago, and yet she remained in the city without one to help new workers--because her patron had been so kind to her. The clerk whom you first speak to upon entering Eulmore even says that if you are “fired” or otherwise lose your patronage, you can try to find another patron to remain in the city or work as a general laborer like Fathana until, presumably, you do find another patron. Or maybe you don’t even need a patron, and you are allowed to stay as your own boss at that point, she certainly was.

Since the Chais helped us leave the city, I’m not at all sure why they didn’t do the same for Tristol, especially if Vauthry’s violence was a well-known thing. It’s almost like violence from Vauthry wasn’t expected, and they’d never think that would happen. I mean, some recent time ago, Vauthry only exiled thieves from Eulmore.

(Hell, Square may have even fudged Tristol’s punishment, implying Vauthry had ordered him tossed off the balustrade of The Offer. Vauthry’s balcony appears to be the one directly above The Path To Glory, right above the gates into Eulmore. There doesn’t seem to be ocean nearby at any realistic distance or angle from that balcony. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

- Laws that we saw in effect were for the benefit of patrons and bonded citizens alike. There was nothing to suggest those laws were unreasonable, either. The punishment became fuck no unreasonable (though as I pointed out earlier, the punishments seemed to ramp up in violence the longer the warden was part of him, from exile to a literal pound of flesh, much like Titania went from a benevolent ruler to Jumpscare Prime). But fraud being a crime is sort of expected anywhere, and creeps at the Beehive should not touch dancers unless dancers consent, lest they get the bouncer. ( another strangely thoughtful law for a “tyrant”. )

- The bonded residents inside seemed much happier with their lot than Alphinaud’s dramatic assessment, which was also confusing as hell.

- Entire families were allowed to enter if one member was hired. Alphinaud was able to drag us along with a minimum of fuss as his “assistant”. Vauthry’s definition of how one “gives” to Eulmore was not based solely on traditional work.

- Bonded residents were not afraid at all to speak of bending rules for perfect strangers when offering drinks to us, so Vauthry wasn't out prowling for blood 24/7 like an Inquisitor trying to fill their heretic quota. Not only was Dulia-Chai not afraid to go calm him down at the height of his rage, Chai-Nuzz didn't freak out at the idea she'd do it. Nuzz. Wasn’t nervous. Yeah, let that one sink in 9_6

The only time Vauthry acted seemed to be when an issue was brought forward directly to him. Otherwise, it seemed like standard Lightwarden behavior: stasis, until presented with a real and immediate threat to itself, which in Vauthry’s case was a threat to the order of his city, or the ones killing Lightwardens.

For allegedly being aggressive against Kholusia's neighbors, Vauthry seemed to have taken the Crystarium's refusal of his offer to lead them back in the day really well, as in, he did jack shit in retaliation and accepted it. In fact, he was so warlike, Emet-Selch was surprised Vauthry would move that army, even for a very clear threat against fulfilling the false destiny Emet-Selch forced on him.

While on the subject of aggression, the people in Amity have dialogue indicating they feared Vauthry would send the army after them--which he obviously never did, in all 20 years of his reign.

- “No one leaves” except hey whoa there hi, Lue-Reeq, who comes and goes as he pleases. Plus that bonded resident who came to Wright looking for ale. Plus us, also bonded residents, because Dulia-Chai once again had nothing to fear from Vauthry.

Also anyone who was exiled previously. For supposedly wanting to keep people inside Eulmore, Vauthry sure was terrible at doing it lmao

GCBTW: I'd really love to see Square and Alphinaud be similarly vocal and insistent with the actual horrors our own Allied city-states commit without the corruption of a Lightwarden in play. The selective outrage/pearl-clutching is really immersion-breaking.

Ishgard: “Highborn” genuinely exploiting the “lowborn” every other sidequest to this day. Genocide of the Au Ra. At least two FATEs, one job quest, one lorebook entry, and one dungeon indicate Ishgard has fucking disgusting levels of rape carried out by figures of authority. Rent is being charged for people from the Brume--the homeless, destitute people in the Brume--to live in the Firmament, but they can arrange payment plans! And this was all talked about while one of them was shivering in the cold nearby. What, can't the highborn be arsed to share what they have? Eulmore is the height of wickedness because they couldn't cram an island full of people into one tower, but Ishgard's our pal even though they can't manage to make space in their mansions for one small area of one city. My God, Vauthry had FOOD in his chamber, shame!--but that's okay, Aymeric, you rock that extravagant dinner spread in the dating sim cutscene. Maybe the Brume can fight over the Ishgardian Muffin crumbs.

(Yes, I know, Vauthry had more food than that in his chamber. He’s also approaching fifteen-plus feet tall. Proportionally, the food in his chamber would be the equivalent of you or me living on cocktail peanuts and thimbles of water. Once more, Square was so fixated on fatphobia they didn’t do the fucking math.)

Doma: “Hey yeah look guys I know child trafficking is bad but let’s just smile and nod at this guy who did it to Yotsuyu and give him a different post, okay? Okay. Remember to be polite. We will never speak of this again.”

“Let me laugh about your beliefs and call them bullshit while I angle you into a war that isn’t even yours, Xaela tribes.” Gridania: Lets people straight up die if the “elements” tell them it’s okay. Exiling a child for stealing a bag of flower seeds is normal and totally not at all fucked up. Open and accepted racism against the Duskwights with no sign of Kan-E-Senna saying fucking stop that shit.

Ul’dah: Human trafficking. Child trafficking. Human lab rats. Using prisoners for blood sports. The Syndicate living it up in finery, giving exactly nothing to people living in the streets. Notoriously corrupt Brass Blades. More implications of fucking disgusting levels of rape. Turning away the Doman refugees when they literally had nowhere else to go and nothing left. We smiled and nodded when Godbert said people mustn’t be given charity, they must work for their own good.

Limsa Lominsa: Fucks over the “beast tribes” at every opportunity, then complains they summon Primals.

But remember, folks, it was Vauthry’s Eulmore that was the real evil we had to desperately move against. Not the newer, capitalist Eulmore that didn’t feed two guys from Wright because they couldn’t afford it, shoosh those “bones of the poor” don’t count. The writers tried to retcon a lot in 5.1, it seemed--suddenly, it was implied people were forced to leave villages, conscripted, etc. Except the people were still there to tell us otherwise in 5.0, and there was still no sign of any Eulmoran forces keeping them in Gate Town. We went from Alphinaud demanding the free citizens take responsibility for what they’d done in Eulmore to posthumously blaming Vauthry’s “bad influence” for everything up to and including a noblewoman’s attempted murder of her maidservant, because the noblewoman’s husband was creeping on the girl.

Which leads us to another of my biggest peeves--all the while, despite “the truth” being so important when it came to Emet-Selch, the sins of Vauthry’s father and the suffering his wife and child endured because of Emet-Selch’s direct hand are left unspoken. We smile and nod silently to Eulmorans and then offer them up Vauthry and his “bad influence” as an excuse for their own misdeeds. I’ve never felt less a “hero” in this game as I did then. Yet Emet-Selch, who committed this atrocity on a child, was called a HERO because fandom darling, while the child is vilified and thoroughly dehumanized.

It’s really telling how much blind condemnation the fanbase dealt to Vauthry for reasons that were completely inaccurate, while the fandom darling of this expansion was 100% the founder of not one, but two civilizations based on domination, the most recent being a nation whose canon creed is "No lands must remain beyond our grasp. Go forth. Conquer. Rule.", a nation whose people have a habit of calling all the “lesser races” they conscript “savages”. Fandom Darling was also hype af for Black Rose and called it worthy of his bloodline! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

It’s really telling that the fanbase will randomly accuse Vauthry of being a sexual predator with Sin Eaters based on exactly zero evidence (but a lot of projection on their part), while the fandom darling 100% canonly used the actual Solus zos Galvus’ enthralled body to sire a child with Galvus’ unwitting wife, and going by the dialogue--

--he’s done that before. No wonder consent was no big deal when he made that offer to Former Mayor. But this was played for sympathy because fandom darling and what do you know, the fandom bought it.

Square “both sided” actual authoritarian characters--actual colonizers, actual mass murderers of entire worlds, actual skeevy-ass characters who don’t care about consent because “not really alive”--called it “heroic”, even (the latter was called “moral relativism”, and it’s genuinely unnerving how many players pushed that as absolution or relatable)--but throughout the course of the main expansion and two subsequent patches,Square went all-in that the fat guy who had his agency and sanity stolen from him in utero to be used as a tool of destruction was the real tyrant. We the player were encouraged to buddy up with E-S while we were never once given the option to wonder if something was terribly amiss with Vauthry, if he may need help. They didn’t even spare us a “jfc that poor man, the Eaters got to him” when he blindly twisted his neck 180 to neither see nor hear us. He was still “evil” because reasons, a.k.a., he was fat.

TL;DR, the playerbase:

I remain unconvinced the Ancients were not clever enough to suspect summoning the “Will Of The Star” may have an effect on their own wills, as their wishes for Zodiark carried an unspoken need for the Elder Primal to be granted control to achieve its end. Emet-Selch stated that Tempering was to be “expected”, even “natural”, though his appearance towards the end of 5.3 seems to contradict Tempering: has there ever been another instance that a Tempered being was able to act directly against the best interests of the primal that holds them in thrall? Elidibus sure couldn’t.

Disclaimer: I actually have no issue with liking the Ascians, be it shipping, writing, art, porn mods, whatever. But if you come into my yard with nothing but shit talk for Vauthry on reblogs of my art, yet have all the praise for the one who made him, you’re going to hear in my personal space about why you’re a hypocrite. Often. With receipts.

The End.

First off, it’s popular in the fandom to say the Lightwarden was Vauthry’s real body because it’s just so damn inconvenient to the dating sim mentality that the fat guy was the default. Thing is:

That is Innocence’s head and its wings inside Vauthry’s split-open back during the pre-phase two “transformation”. Between that and the second face that appeared to cave in most of Vauthry’s chest (on the heart side, interestingly enough), the face whose eyes opened and glowed upon the Warden’s “awakening”:

It doesn’t look at all like it was a “transformation”. It looks like the Lightwarden emerged and absorbed what was left of its host’s physical form while still retaining Vauthry’s broken mind. (Notice the nose, much longer than Vauthry’s actual nose, eye spacing, the bit of smile. That second face was the Warden.)

Before his death, Vauthry did not say "well dang, the Ascians promised I would be all-powerful so I could be evil! Curse them for cheating me!"

He said "Father told me...that I am hope. That I am righteousness. That I am...a god... That is why I was born...as man and sin eater both...I kept the people safe!"

Those lines make no sense if Vauthry interpreted Father’s manipulations as "haha I'm a spoiled evil brat I can do what I want". A spoiled evil brat wouldn't need to be convinced what they were doing was GOOD, would they? Why would that even have been a thing, wouldn't they just not care? He had the power to not give a shit. Instead, he would see his peoples’ “dreams fulfilled, their wishes granted.” EDIT - Canon as of 5.3 appears to support this analysis! \o/

Spoken at the end by G’raha Tia on the subject of enduring hope, and additionally supported by the Minstreling Wander, who told us in the Immaculate EX unlock he could not say if Vauthry was wicked in his youth. ”Vindicate his existence”. Vauthry was never in this for the evil selfish lulz. He believed he needed to prove the “half Sin Eater” heritage forced on him did not make him a monster, that it was good, that he was good, and he did it by doing everything he was gaslighted to believe was good by his father--until the Warden finally broke him entirely. To the people who debated so strongly he was just evil because reasons, or refused to hold other characters to the same standards of damnation they set for him because reasons, hope your shoe tastes good. Your reasons were always really clear, btw.

This remains the story of a child who needed a hero that never came, and players choose to discard it, like the free citizens snub produce, because Vauthry isn’t pretty enough for them. A fat character’s stolen life simply isn’t worth the effort of contemplation because the one who made him makes players horny on main.

What happened to this character, with just the little information the game gave us, was straight-up abuse. Yet too many in the fanbase thought no further than juvenile fat jokes (so cool) or unquestioning contempt for a character who was clearly in a state of mental breakdown (unless it was the fandom darling, he’s allowed, even if it destroys worlds) --while Square readily had their characters ace detective enough to detect his weight, but not his unnatural height, his pointed ears, his fogged over eyes, his bendy-straw neck, his second freaking face. Oh, and he can control Sin Eaters. Wait, you mean the Lightwarden was in him the whole time!? Seems legit gais, what an unexpected turn of events!

ᐠ( ᐛ )ᐟ

#FFXIV #long post #Vauthry #character analysis #Lord Vauthry #Eulmore #Shadowbringers

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thebiasrekkers · 5 years ago

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Make It Right [BTS Mafia!AU]

Plot: “It’s always darkest before the dawn…” It’s a dog-eat-dog world in Seoul, South Korea. One has to dwell in the shadows in order to reach for the light. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to feel the sunlight on your face? What will it take to drag you back into darkness? How long will the journey be to make it right?

Rating: NC-17 // NSFW

Genre: Series | Mafia!AU | Crime!AU | Angst | Romance/Fluff

Pairings: Jin x OC | Taehyung/Hoseok x OC | Yoongi/Jungkook x OC

Warnings: Graphic Violence, Heavy Language, Angst, Slow Burn, Smut

Previous Chapters: Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Links: FAQ || BTS Masterlist || Admin E’s AO3 || Admin E’s WP || [ REQUESTS ARE OPEN ]

Word Count: 2,832

Tag List: @prisczero, @pinkpjmin, @btsaudge, @flowerwrites06, @unoriginal-username15432, @halussali

CHAPTER 34: EPIPHANY

“Underneath the smiling mask, my true self is coming out.”

© thebiasrekkers (Admin E). All rights reserved. Reposting/modifying our work is prohibited. Translations are not allowed. Plagiarism/stealing is not tolerated by any means. Legal action will be taken in instances of theft.

Seoul – Cheongdam; Gangnam District South Korea

Anastasia groaned when she felt someone tugging at her shoulder, attempting to rouse her from her drunken slumber. Her body swayed back and forth and she swatted at the hand pulling her. Her hand fumbled around for the covers and she attempted to yank them up and over her head. Solace was given to her for a moment and she hummed in sleepy contentment.

However, her victory was short-lived when the blanket was completely ripped from her body, exposing her to the open air. Flailing like a toddler throwing a tantrum, Anastasia flopped onto her back and then sprung up into a sitting position. Her dirty blonde hair was messy and tangled but she didn’t care. Instead, she glared up at the person who was destroying her sweet slumber.

“Ana,” Raelyn said while shaking her head, “if you don’t get up and come on.”

Anastasia flung her arms around in various directions, fighting back an oncoming migraine and whining in the process. “Rae Unnie, it’s my day off!”

Raelyn held a glass of water out to her. She took it and automatically opened her other hand to accept the aspirin that was waiting for her. Raelyn smirked when she downed the aspirin and drained the glass.

“I made breakfast,” said the older woman, turning away from her to head down the small flight of stairs from the bedroom loft, “so get washed up and come down to eat.”

“Kay,” was all Anastasia offered before swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.

Not wanting to keep her friend waiting, she opted to wash her face and brush her teeth. She’d shower later. Once she made her way downstairs, Anastasia took note of the folded-up blankets and pillows on the couch. The previous night’s antics played out in her mind and she couldn’t help grinning.

Raelyn suddenly showed up at her door with two big bottles of booze. Anastasia wasn’t one to usually turn down free alcohol, but she also knew that Raelyn wasn’t the type to mindlessly indulge in binge drinking like some college student. There was clearly something on her mind and the only way to chase it away was through booze. Anastasia could relate and since she had the next day off, she didn’t mind spending the evening drinking away.

They played cards, Monopoly, UNO and vegged out on the couch watching Netflix. Neither of them talked about work or the boys. Anastasia could tell that Raelyn wanted to avoid those subjects as much as possible. Everyone deserved a night to escape and there was a part of her that felt bad that they hadn’t included Eden. When it was mentioned, Raelyn said that Eden had other plans. Without having to say it aloud, Anastasia knew that it was with Jungkook. The woman was brutally honest and stubborn, but her affection toward Jungkook was cute.

She would tease her about it relentlessly.

The smells from the kitchen made Anastasia’s stomach groan, reminding her that she was, in fact, starving. It reminded her of when she had her own aspirations to start a restaurant and ultimately failed. It was probably for the best, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t prone to thinking about those days from time to time.

Raelyn whipped them up a traditional Southern Style breakfast of sausage, eggs, grits and toast. A side of sliced strawberries were set on small plates. Anastasia watched her pour a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice for each of them. When everything was set, the two women sidled onto the chairs by the counter and began to eat, neither of them wanting to say anything until they’d gotten a few bites in.

Anastasia swallowed a mouthful of toast and scrambled eggs, washing it down with milk, before finally deciding to break the silence. “So, do you want to talk about it now?”

The fork hovered by Raelyn’s lips and stayed there for a few seconds. She sighed, setting the utensil down on her plate. Anastasia remained quiet, not sure if she should repeat the question. There was a glint in Raelyn’s eyes that almost screamed what was being turned over and over inside of her head. But doing that would mean she hadn’t processed anything; that she hadn’t been sitting on this something for days.

She wouldn’t have shown up with the offer to booze it up if she wasn’t prepared to get her mind right.

Stabbing at a piece of strawberry, Anastasia gripped the utensil and tried to slow her heart rate some. It never usually took Raelyn this long to speak her mind. Especially if something was bothering her. This, in turn, made her uncomfortable. But instead of prodding further, she waited.

She watched Raelyn pressing her hand to her forehead, sighing again. “Everything’s fucked up,” she finally said.

Anastasia blinked, canting her head slightly. “What do you mean?”

Raelyn was now pressing both of her hands to her face. “I mean everything is fucked up, Ana.”

There was a broken tone in her voice that was unfamiliar to Anastasia. She couldn’t help but worry that something terrible had happened. But from what she understood, the boys were doing okay. Their businesses were thriving, and they were walking away from the criminal underworld like they’d dreamed. Raelyn’s reason for worrying wasn’t even a factor anymore. She could date Taehyung freely and without the strain of having to look over her shoulder.

She didn’t understand what the problem was.

Anastasia reached out to place a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Did something happen?” She paused, brows furrowing. “I mean, besides what happened with Eden Unnie?”

She’d heard about the incident that occurred when Raelyn was dispatched to another hospital. Eden got half a dozen voicemails from her that day and an earful of high-pitched screaming when she finally answered the phone. Regardless of how tough her friends were, Anastasia didn’t want them getting hurt. Not when there wasn’t a need for them to worry about it anymore.

Raelyn shook her head back and forth fervently, her fingers clenching into fists near her forehead. “Things were supposed to get better once they went straight, right?” Anastasia’s brows furrowed when the older woman finally turned to look at her, eyes wide and shaking. “So why does it feel like things are going to get worse?”

“What?” She felt a lump forming in her throat. “What in the world is that supposed to mean? Why would they get worse?”

The older woman laughed, border lining mania, and this caused Anastasia’s hand to fall from her shoulder. “God, how could I have been so fucking stupid? How could I have missed it?”

Anastasia didn’t understand what she was talking about. However, just because she couldn’t understand didn’t mean that the implications weren’t unsettling. It felt like she’d eaten a bag of river stones for breakfast – her stomach heavy and cold.

“Jimin told me something, Ana, and I’m not gonna lie, it rattled the hell out of me.”

“What did he—”

“The boys might be out, but there’s competition that wants them to stay.”

She blinked, unable to believe what she’d just heard.

“Whoa, wait…what?” Again, she blinked. “Why?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Raelyn scoffed. “Why in the fuck—”

“—would they want their rivals to stick around when they could just claim the territory the Golden Jackals left for themselves?” Anastasia finished the thought and now it was Raelyn’s turn to look surprised. Averting her gaze, she curled her hand near her chin while glaring at her half-eaten breakfast. “That just doesn’t make sense. Strategically, when competition is gone, that leaves room for a takeover when the option for a merger is no longer on the table.”

From a marketing or bargaining standpoint, attacking the former Golden Jackals would lead to zero gain. She recalled a conversation she had with Seokjin about something similar. When companies refused to go along with mergers, a buyout option was presented. If the buyout option was refused, then eradicating all competition from the board was the next step. But if the competition chose to pull itself from the game, then the remaining competitors usually fought amongst themselves over who would take over what was left behind.

Pulling the competition back that chose to remove themselves would bring them no profit. It would create unrest all over again…

Is someone foaming at the mouth or something?

When she next met Raelyn’s gaze, it was like something dawned on the older woman. Several emotions passed over her face, but the one that Anastasia recognized immediately was anger. Something she’d said apparently set her off.

“They think they’re bluffing.”

“Huh?”

Raelyn stood from her chair suddenly, causing Anastasia to recoil. “They think Hoseok and the others are bluffing!” She began pacing and all Anastasia could do was follow her with her eyes. “They’re not sure if they’ve really dissolved or not. That’s why they’re not launching a war.” She smacked her forehead while letting loose a mirthless laugh. “That’s why the others haven’t started stirring up shit. They’re not sure what Hoseok and the others are going to do!”

Anastasia heard her laugh again, but it sounded terrible, making her skin crawl. “Rae…”

The older woman continued pacing for a few more minutes, muttering things to herself. When she suddenly stopped, Anastasia was halfway out of her seat. The two friends met each other’s gazes and it was like they both thought the same thing at that very same moment.

“What’s going to happen when they find out that it’s true?”

The work week seemed to crawl at a snail’s pace. It was unbearable and Anastasia was sure she would start the process of plucking her own eyeballs out. Seokjin and she hardly had time to see each other at all since he was doing his best to assist Hoseok and Namjoon at the new hotel in Yongsan. Not that she blamed him or needed her hand held. He wouldn’t have hired her if he didn’t think she was capable of handling things without him constantly being in the office.

Jimin being there was a boon and he was always at the ready to assist whenever she needed him. Even when she didn’t, he had coffee and snacks ready – encouraging her to take breaks before she got lost in a mountain of paperwork.

Burying herself in her work, however, was the only way she could successfully chase her worries from her mind.

She’d wanted to pick Jimin’s brain; to figure out what was going on behind the scenes. All she knew was the financial aspect of their businesses. It was her job to maintain it and make sure all the books were up to date. Nothing was out of place and Seokjin wasn’t asking her to fudge the books either. Accounts were stable and clean. No money was laundered since none of their funds were funneling in from an outside source even remotely associated with the criminal underworld.

Yet she couldn’t shake the frustration and worry that radiated from Raelyn. It was bleeding across to her now, making it hard to focus on her job. Seokjin and she were getting closer, sure, and others could clearly see that they were an item. But without him there to reassure her that things were going to be alright, Anastasia felt on edge. Hell, borderline neurotic. She could admit it.

Was their friend, Eden, suffering like this also? When she saw her a few days ago, it didn’t look like it. What was she doing that was different than what either Raelyn or she were? Had the mixed girl gotten her hands on some magic pills, being selfish and unwilling to share?

Wanting to stop by her friend’s shop on her lunch break, she took a breath of air in relief when she arrived and saw that nothing was happening. The garage was closed, a sign hanging out the window saying they were out to lunch and would be back in an hour. Anastasia finished her paperwork early and decided she would take a long lunch, so she had time to kill until her friend got back. Maybe Eden would have some answers to the questions that were constantly nagging at her.

Just as she was about to hail a cab to a nearby café, Anastasia let out a sharp squeak, realizing too late that someone was now in front of her. Her chest bumped into said person, causing her to stumble backwards. The stiletto points of her shoes scraped along the concrete loudly. When she was positive she was going to see the sky, a pair of hands grabbed her shoulders to steady her.

“Whoa,” said a gentle voice, a hint of amusement laced through it, “careful there.”

“I’m so sorry!” Anastasia apologized, taking a step back and bowing her head. “I should have been paying more attention.”

“It’s alright. I was just wondering where the fire was.”

When she finally lifted her head to look up, she saw an unfamiliar man standing in front of her. He had mouse brown hair, umber eyes, and a sweet smile that mirrored in motion with said eyes. Flushing at his appearance, she quickly shifted her gaze to look away from him. She felt more embarrassed than anything else.

“There’s no fire.”

“I can see that.” She moved to look at him again just as the man brushed some of his hair out of his eyes. “Were you here for an appointment?”

“Oh, no,” she said with a laugh, “I just came to see my friend. Looks like I just missed them.”

He slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “In this day and age, you didn’t think to call her ahead of time?”

Anastasia pressed her hand against the side of her neck, giving a shy laugh while shrugging one shoulder. “I suck at surprises?” She laughed again until a thought struck her, causing a tiny shiver to shoot down her spine. Her hand slid slowly from her neck, falling to her side as she began narrowing her eyes at the stranger in front of her. “How did you know my friend’s a girl?”

“I assumed.”

“Assumed that I don’t have guy friends?” Anastasia took a step back when she saw the man’s gaze darken, his smile remaining. “Or that you already know who owns this shop?”

The man laughed, shrugging and then taking a step forward. She took another step back. He leaned forward, peering at her like he was examining a specimen in a jar.

“Clever girl,” he mused, straightening to his full height, “it didn’t take you long to pick up on that. No wonder you’re their financial advisor.”

Her eyes narrowed further. Anastasia didn’t appreciate being mocked. “…and who the fuck are you?”

“Ya, Yoo Kihyun,” called a familiar voice from the sidewalk. They both looked to see Yoongi approaching them and Anastasia felt a wave of relief wash over her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Kihyun gave a lazy smile but there was no warmth in the gesture. Anastasia shuffled a few steps back when Yoongi closed the distance between them. He made a point to place himself in front of Anastasia, shielding her from the man who was getting his kicks out of messing with her. She had half a mind to throw her shoe at him.

Peering at him over Yoongi’s shoulder, Anastasia maintained vigilance as the other man scrutinized over her rescuer.

“Ah, Yoongi-ah. It’s been so long.”

She heard Yoongi scoff. “Not long enough. Now answer me: what do you think you’re doing?” Kihyun said nothing. “Actually, a better question: why are you here?”

“No reason,” he dismissed and Anastasia bit back her urge to pop off, “curiosity mostly.”

“I’m not surprised. You’ve always been a sick, twisted little fuck.” Anastasia blinked at the barbs coming from Yoongi. She gasped when he suddenly turned around to look at her. “When Eden gets back, don’t tell her about this.”

“Huh? But why?”

“Please, Ana-ssi,” he said, his brows furrowing.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she finally nodded – albeit reluctantly. Yoongi’s expression relaxed somewhat and he bowed his head.

“Thank you.” He then turned around to face Kihyun. “You’re done here, Kihyun-ah. You talk to me now.” Yoongi strolled past the other man, not so much as giving him a backwards glance. “Follow me.”

Kihyun smirked, winked at Anastasia, and then followed after Yoongi as was demanded of him. Anastasia wasn’t sure of what to make of that encounter, but she knew she would have to thank Yoongi properly when she got the chance. Kihyun’s smile may have been charming, but the way he carried himself suggested something cold and unfeeling.

It left a knot in Anastasia’s stomach.

Is he one of the guys Rae was talking about? she thought, frowning, …are they the ones trying to pull them back?

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cielleduciel · 5 years ago

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okay okay, Black Eagles/Crimson Flower. this is very long and very rambly bc i was mad and i probably repeat myself a lot but whatever

keep in mind going forward that this was my FE3H first route and the only one i've played so far, and it was... disappointing. i really, really want to like Edelgard as a character bc she seems interesting and she has so much potential, but fact is the game never allows her any sort of true depth, and never lets you interact with her in any meaningful way

and i hate to say it bc i ALWAYS go to bat for complex underappreciated female characters, which is what i was expecting out of this, but that's not... even what she is. none of her potential is ever realized. she's one-note and static and the writers seem to think that just throwing in a traumatic backstory (that never gets explored, even as it very obviously relates directly to her worldview) and a few cute/quirky character moments will give her depth, but it doesn't

the game really LOVES to try and play up this special bond between Edelgard and Byleth and how much Byleth means to her, but it never feels earned. she always says that she feels like she can tell Byleth anything and everything, but she doesn't. i have no better understanding about why she felt like she needed to do the things she did than i did at the end of part 1. all she ever says is that she has to do it all in the name of her ideals and a better future and it's the only way, and all i ever wanted throughout the entire route was to ask WHY ? WHY is this the only way ? WHY do you feel like this is the only thing you can do ? WHY are all other options off the table ?

she's cooperating directly with Those Who Slither In The Dark (TWSITD), who not only experimented on and tortured Edelgard herself and killed her siblings, but also killed Byleth's father, but we never explore the implications of that. hell, Edelgard's issues aside, Byleth themself has their own stake in this, their own very good reasons to question Edelgard and the lengths she's willing to go to in order to achieve this future of hers, but they're NEVER given the chance. if you choose her route, the game apparently assumes that you've decided to follow her without question or reserve, regardless of everything that happened, even though it makes no sense in context. at the end of the route, Edelgard even admits that she couldn't understand why Byleth wound up taking her side, and i wanted to SCREAM !!! LIKE YEAH, I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT EITHER ??? i was HOPING we would get to explore that at some point but I GUESS NOT ????

at most, Edelgard offers platitudes by saying that she too hates TWSITD and regrets everything they've done but still maintains that her alliance with them is necessary for the time being, because they are the best allies she has against the church, and she needs their strength. again, my question is: WHY ? because while i can see how they may have been useful to her in part 1, i didn't see them do ANYTHING to help her during the entirety of part 2. they had literally zero presence in any of the battles, were not even shown or mentioned aside from the moments where they were being CLEARLY ANTAGONISTIC towards her, like when they NUKED ARIANRHOD AS A "WARNING" as soon as Edelgard captured the city bc they were mad she killed one of their officers,

and yet she felt like she needed to spin the story to say it was the church's doing so as to like, save face and rally morale while maintaining their alliance, i guess, but why ?** even in the FINAL BATTLE AGAINST RHEA HERSELF, Arundel shows up ONLY to literally say "yeah i'm just here to watch lmao". so like, as far as i know from everything i have physically seen, we defeated the church without their help at all--in SPITE of their "help", even--which does not help me understand why her alliance with TWSITD is so necessary that Edelgard has to just grit her teeth, bear it, and cover for them until the war is over so that she can finally turn on them

(**i get not telling the entire army about Arianrhod to avoid panic and questions, but what was the point of lying to the rest of the Black Eagles ? why is it that Byleth, Edelgard, and Hubert seem to be the only ones allowed to know about the empire's workings with TWSITD ? like what was even the point of Edelgard revealing herself as the Flame Emperor at the end of part 1 ((which was also a totally botched scene but i'm not even gonna get into that here))? i thought the reason for that scene WAS to reveal the truth to everyone that she was working with TWSITD, we even had that whole dramatic battle where Edelgard had to fight her own house and professor bc of it ? but i guess it wasn't, bc none of them ever bring it up again, and the game still treats it like they should all still be in the dark about it, so ???)

on top of that, i still don't understand why she felt like she needed to antagonize the Alliance, or even the Kingdom, when her enemy is the church. like i get it, there’s no negotiating with the church as it is, violent conflict with them is inevitable and i’m not against that, i understand it and i can get behind it. but why didn't she ever try talking to the other two factions or working together w them or FORGING ALLIANCES instead of resorting immediately to violence ?** maybe i can believe that Dimitri and the Kingdom are a lost cause, but for example--and again now i haven't played the GD route, but from what i understand-- Claude's values are fairly similar to Edelgard's, and he does a lot of digging into the church on his own and is able to discover much of the truth. her alliance with TWSITD is apparently "necessary" but it never occurs to her to reach out to GOOD PEOPLE like Claude who would share her interests ? why ? why can’t we even bring it up ?

(**my confusion with this is best summed up by that one interaction she has with Dimitri in part 2, where before they're about to fight, he asks her, "Must you continue to conquer? Continue to kill?" and her response is literally, "Must you continue to reconquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" like WHAT ? WHAT KIND OF CHILDISH "NO U" NONSENSE IS THAT ? YOU'RE LITERALLY THE AGGRESSOR HERE, ARE YOU REALLY TRYING TO TELL HIM HE SHOULD'VE JUST SAT BACK AND LET YOU TAKE THE KINGDOM WITHOUT EXPLAINING ANYTHING ? HE'S TRYING TO REACH OUT TO YOU, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS REFUSE TO GIVE HIM A STRAIGHT ANSWER. WHY ARE YOU BEING SO OBTUSE ABOUT THIS. WHAT IS THE REASON)

this isn't even getting into the fact that it becomes very obvious that Edelgard does not have the whole story behind the church and TWSITD, but there's no way to call that into question either. from what i understand from a few spoilers i've been given, she even gets some parts of the story flat-out wrong. this is The Story that she uses to justify all her actions, to herself and to others, and yet she's clearly missing key details, but we never get to question it, or investigate it further, or do anything about it

and what makes it suck extra is that, as i said, i really wanted so, so badly to love Edelgard. i wanted that bond between her and Byleth to feel real, and earned, and substantial. i wanted to work together and interact with her, to understand her, bc i genuinely sympathize with her goals. let’s erase inequality, abolish the nobility, destroy the crest system that sustains it, and tear down an oppressively intolerant religious institution ? hell yes sign me up bitch !!!! i don't like that we can't GUIDE her in her pursuit of that, or at least even try to understand why she's so committed to this horrific warpath she's on. bc why else would i have chosen to join her side and play her route ? why else is Byleth there, as her teacher ?

or maybe i'm not even supposed to sympathize with her or her cause, but they never make that point either ! like let's ignore what i want and entertain the notion that perhaps Edelgard's meant to be seen as clearly, dangerously radical and beyond all reason, that her route is supposed to be as close to a "bad" route as this game gets and you're supposed to feel guilty for helping her. i mean there definitely are points that made me go “uh, hey, what we’re doing here is kind of terrible”. the thing is they could've easily made that point at any time during her route, had moments where they highlighted the destruction left in Edelgard's wake as she "carves a bloody path" to her future with Byleth by her side, had her experience some kind of consequence for her actions or a "falling from grace" moment, exposed all the flawed logic behind her actions and examined how she came to be the way she is--but nothing like that ever happens. it’s just like “hooray we successfully invaded and conquered an independent nation :) on to the next one !” even in the epilogue, there's no downside to helping her win, no sort of realistic consequence like, idk, malcontent spreads, people aren’t happy that Edelgard took over their nation by force despite the reforms, riots flare up, etc etc., nothing that asks the player to stop and think about all this. they play everything straight but then refuse to give it meaning or make sense of any of it

and there's PLENTY of ways to make sense of it. even i can imagine some potential in-universe explanations to a lot of the "why" questions i have about Edelgard--why does she preemptively isolate herself from everyone that hasn't already demonstrated unconditional allegiance to her, why does she refuse to seek other allies or reach out to her peers like Dimitri or Claude for help and yet continue to associate with the dangerous group that is the source of her trauma, why does she rightly question one narrative while she never thinks to question the other, why does she resort to violence so quickly and easily even as she laments it, etc etc. the problem is that *the game itself* doesn't even THINK to try and address any of this, and so it's never able to make a point about any of it

so yeah, the point COULD'VE BEEN that she is too stubborn, too far gone, too caught up in her own narrative to comprehend that her actions are not as necessary as she thinks they are, too self-righteous to see the parallels between herself and Rhea as she needlessly sacrifices countless lives for her cause while she claims that HER life is too important to lose, too stuck in her own head to see the hypocrisy in her denouncement of the nobility and church and their treatment of the masses while SHE, Miss Imperial Royalty herself, throws others' lives away for her war--BUT the point is never made !! there's no statement from that point of view either ! there is literally no message ! Edelgard goes through no character development, positive or negative, despite all the groundwork for it being laid out plainly. she does not get a chance to grow, nor does she ever regress, nor is she ever faced with the consequences of her actions, and so no statement is ever made about her character or anything she represents

all the potential was there for Crimson Flower to have been a really good story, and that's why i'm so frustrated that i'm writing an essay about it. and it didn't HAVE to be a positive one with a happy ending, or even a mixed, bittersweet one, which i think would've been best. it easily could've been a tragic story about like, Byleth witnessing the fall of their misguided student firsthand as they try and fail to reach out to her, powerless to save her from herself as she drifts away from everybody, being forced into a position where her death becomes necessary in order to preserve the lives of others, or something--but it didn't try to do anything like that. it didn't try to do ANYTHING ! in fact, i would say her character is much more compelling in all the other routes where she DIES, if only bc at least then it feels like SOMETHING is being said about her character

the real kicker is that, at the end of Crimson Flower, it's said that Edelgard goes on to abolish the nobility, and yet in the epilogue she remains the emperor, and all your other units of noble birth still...... have noble titles and landholdings. not to mention i can't even be sure if the scene where Byleth's crest disappears is supposed to represent the disappearance of all crests, or just Byleth's ? so like i don't actually know what i'm supposed to think Edelgard accomplished ? what was the point of mindlessly helping her commit war crimes ? if not a character arc, or a plot resolution, or some greater message, or even the world state i was promised to get from siding with her, what exactly am i supposed to get out of this route ???

i keep thinking about how it feels in contrast to her progression in every other route, and to how Dimitri is written. bc when Byleth joins anyone else, Edelgard always dies, as Dimitri does. but unlike with Dimitri, intsys didn't adapt Edelgard's progression to Byleth's presence, beyond the simple facts of whether she wins/loses and lives/dies. what i’ve gathered from the other routes is that they portray her as a senselessly violent, incomprehensible, self-righteous kid with too much power who became consumed by it and then dies/is killed as a natural consequence of her own actions. i was expecting the difference in her route to be that we get to explore her side more and understand her inner workings and what could have led her down this path, and then to either get the chance to make a difference, or to be dragged down with her as a cautionary tale. but she STILL comes across as senselessly violent, incomprehensible, self-righteous and power-trippy, except now i get to enable her, and that’s presented as like, a genuinely wholesome thing ?

my gf has said that it feels like you're not meant to side with Edelgard, just from how poorly written and constructed her entire route is**, and i've been getting the same feeling. having finished it, the whole thing felt hollow. her actions and choices always feel absurd and frustrating because we never get any insight into what she's thinking, there's too much Telling and not enough Showing to back up any of the Telling, there are so many aspects of the route that don't make sense, and there's no ATTEMPT to make them make sense

(**seriously the production value felt so low at times that it got embarrassing to watch. like after part 1, Jeritza just dropped off the face of the planet with no explanation, and no one in the game ever brought him up again or even wondered where he was, not even Edelgard. then the recent game update suddenly added him to my roster right before i was about to finish the route, again with no explanation, and no in-game acknowledgement of this. which can only lead me to believe that Jeritza was actually SUPPOSED to be there the whole time but intsys.... forgot about him ? LIKE... THEY FORGOT TO WRITE THE DEATH KNIGHT INTO EDELGARD'S ROUTE ? WHAT)

in fact, it feels to me a lot like death was always the intended resolution for her character and everything was always written around that, but then they decided that wasn't an appropriate tone/direction to take for a route in which Byleth joins her, but then they weren't even bothered to really revise the route in any meaningful way so they just went "fuck it" and gave us.... whatever this mess is. but if so, if intsys really was so set on having her be this tragic misguided villain, i don't understand why they didn't commit to that narrative in her route as well, instead of just half-assing everything and doing nothing meaningful and wasting my time. hell i don't understand why they even bothered to include an Edelgard route if their hearts clearly weren't in it to begin with. just let her be the villain that you guys obviously wanted her to be and go

but, whatever. at least all the OTHER Black Eagle characters were great

#blog chatter #fe3h chatter #fe3h spoilers #feel free to chime in with thoughts or to fill in any missing information or whatever

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noccalula-writes · 5 years ago

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What are your favorite games and franchises? Top 5?

OH BOY have I got feelings on this subject.

Please keep in mind - I’m a storyteller and a writer. I fucking /love/ a good story. I DM a DnD game and my biggest weakness is that I don’t often include enough combat because I am so much more interested in telling a story. So for me, there’s got to be an emotional investment for a game to really land. I also hyperfixate like a motherfucker so I often refuse to pick up new things purely because there’s not enough space in my head for them at the time, so I’m slow getting to things as they come out.

So, I’m first and foremost a survival horror bitch. I cut my teeth on Parasite Eve before I played any others - my mother scrimped and saved and fought her way through Wal-mart back in like 1998 to get me the original Playstation gaming console and Tekken 2 (which was my first PS game, I played it in an arcade near her barber shop as a child - Tomb Raider 2 was my second). The old Playstation discs at that time came with demos for different games, including Metal Gear Solid, which I replayed until I could have done it in my sleep because poverty meant I wasn’t likely to get another game anytime soon. I mention this because the Parasite Eve trailer used to give me nightmares but I was super, super hooked.

I am a huge Silent Hill fan. Huge. That is a tragedy I could write a whole ‘nother post about, because as excited as I am to finally get my hands on Death Stranding (again, poverty, so it’ll be another minute before we can get a PS4), we’ll never get another SH game again unless some major reconciliation happens with Kojima and Konami, which is unlikely (and also hard to hope for - I’m happy Kojima now has the creative freedom to go as balls to the wall as he wants).

I am an equally huge Resident Evil fan. I’ve always maintained that my first fandom was The X Files, but my wife pointed out a few nights ago that my RE love started around the same time in the late 90′s, so now it’s a chicken and egg kind of thing. Point being, it’s either The or One Of my longest lasting fandoms/interests. RE and Silent Hill get compared to one another a lot - RE7 did nothing to help that - but they really are apples and oranges to me. Fruit, sure, but two totally different tones and experiences.

I’ve been a huge Tomb Raider fan for forever - my first high school boyfriend was loaded and bought me Angel of Darkness to come play at his house and while it was def critically panned, I do recall enjoying it - so that’s been fun to get those games remade with updated graphics. I’ve only played the one but the others are def on The List.

So now that I’ve talked for an hour, my Top 5 fave games ever -

#1 - Resident Evil 3 I am beyond jazzed for this remake, and a lot of people in the 90′s complained about RE3′s lack of clear cut boss battles, but I don’t know what they’re talking about. The entire fucking game is a boss battle - Jill vs. Raccoon City, and of course, Nemesis, who used to give my mother nightmares and caused me to sleep with a leaf-stabber by my bed for years. Jill is far and away my favorite protagonist in RE; she’s got a resilience of the spirit that somehow isn’t conflated with naivety, which is uncommon in ‘nice’ female protags. She’s savvy but she’s still kind, and she’s committed as fuck to survival - not to mention, as zealotous a Chris and Jill shipper as I am, she and Carlos had hella chemistry and I’m excited to see where that goes (JD Pardo would have made a fuck of a Carlos Oliviera, btw). It was An Experience and it’s forever at my #1.

#2 - The Last of Us

There is no comparison for emotional weight in video games, as far as I’m concerned. SPOILERS if you don’t already know the ending (this game came out in what, 2014?) but to me one of the biggest thing in the game’s favor is that the protagonist made the wrong choice. He had an option to potentially eradicate the cordyceps fungus and maybe save the world, turn the tides back for humanity, and with the weight of the world in the balance, he chose to save Ellie instead. It was, on a global scale, the wrong choice - but it was the human choice. It was the thing that a dad who never properly grieved his dead daughter would do for the surrogate daughter he inherited by accident. As for Ellie, there is no other character quite like her in games, and she’s fucking quality LGBT representation, especially considering how little we see queer children in media. I still cry every time, we play this game twice a year like clockwork and every single time, I still cry.

#3 - Silent Hill 3

All of SH’s games will have a special place in my heart - and if you wanna talk shit about Downpour, I’ll meet you in the Denny’s parking lot at 11, you better square the fuck up because I will defend Murphy with fists - but 3 is the best, hands down. I felt like it did the best job of streamlining the series’ ... uhm... somewhat complicated lore into something more understandable. SPOILERS: The villains are horrific - the Missionaries strike fear into my heart every time I play, and Claudia eating a miscarried god fetus to become god herself? Fucked up on a level you rarely see. I suppose if you didn’t catch it in the last sentence - your protag Heather vomits up a fetal god late in the game. Yes, you read that right. The best thing about this game though? Heather. I could climb up my feminist soapbox and talk about Heather as a subversion to video game tropes all fucking day - she’s a nonsexualized teenage girl whose father is killed for her character development. She’s self-sufficient, tough but still vulnerable, and hard as nails in a fight. As I might have mentioned a time or six, she also voluntarily aborts a god because Fuck Your Plans, She’s Got Her Own.

#4 - Final Fantasy X

Listen. I don’t know how much of this is because of actually enjoying playing the game and how much of it is emotional attachment. As most of you who follow me know, my mother died when I was sixteen. When I was about fourteen, I dated a rich kid who used to bring his PS2 to our very not-rich house and play games for us to watch - the sort of neophyte version of Watching Guys Play Videogames, if you will, which is another rant for another time. He got a Gamecube specifically so I could play RE Zero and Hunter The Reckoning. He was a neckbeard but he was also desperate to keep me from ditching so he did the smart thing and plied my very poor ass with money and food. The #1 game in the watching roster, though, was FFX - and if you know anything about the game, you know how heavily spirituality features into the story. My mother, very caught up in a very Eastern Philosphy Meets Quantum Physics internal seeking about the nature of things, was hooked from the word Go. She used to sit and watch Trey play for hours - we all did, but having her join us and love it that much? Wonderful. Half my memories of this game are both of us crying - crying when Yuna dances to send the souls, crying when Yuna reveals she’s on a suicide mission, crying when she and Tidus fall in love anyway, crying when she sends her Aeons to die in the final fight, crying over ‘the fayts are waking up’, crying when the big reveal about Auron comes up, crying crying crying. My wife bought it in 2011 and I watched her play through it again and while it suffers from the same issue as all FF games - too much filler and weird battle scenarios - it was cathartic. I miss my mom.

#5 - Resident Evil 6

Eat my entire ass. You already knew this was coming. I will defend this game to my grave for the fact that we have complex, interesting narratives surrounding female characters who have actual personalities. Was it perfect? No. Did it take RE out of horror territory and move it more into action? Woefully, yes. Is this series deeply problematic for where it chooses to set down your mostly-white protags and have them kill their way through? Big time. Don’t gloss those facts. But it’s got emotional punch in spades and a few weird character breaks that ended up being kind of brilliant - Chris has been so resiliently relentless in his fight against bioterrorism that a major PTSD break was inevitable. Leon would of course risk life and limb to help Helena, even though she implicated herself in something terrible. The icing on the cake to me was a grown up Sherry Birkin, wide eyed and believing like hell in the fight she thought she was on the right side of and getting knocked down only to get back up. Ada’s entire side campaign was brilliant. I hate some of the control choices they made in this game - the running from the Haos scenes near the end of Chris and Piers’ campaign makes me want to eat my own fist - but so it goes with most RE games (until RE4, moving your protag was like driving a tank). Jake and Sherry are My Unsinkable Ship. There are at least six scenes across this game that never get easier to watch - when the bomb hits the city and the cut scene of the mass infections begin, I still get sick to my stomach - and that, to me, is the mark that this game struck a hell of a chord in terms of storytelling.

This was long.

#noccalula answers #this was fucking long #ask and ye shall receive #vidja games

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verratensduo · 6 years ago

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Why attack on titan will have no hero

After some discussion with @marley-warriors-of-demon-blood, I have decided to finally make my meta on this past chapter’s use of the “heroic” Helos. Let me first say I admire the optimism of those who honestly think that it means we will get a true hero. You have far more optimism than I do. I go towards a darker take on the line about Helos, simply because of the facts of this world of Attack on Titan. Let it be known unlike most meta writers I don’t claim any impartiality, I am incredibly biased and giving my personal interpretation of the story, I am not her to be popular, just analyze from my perspective. Understand I use the literary terms in sense of hero, villain, anti-hero, and anti-villain as opposed to fandom definition. I won’t lie to you on my take with this, or change it to be more popular, or tell you want you want to hear. I also refuse to change my views to be popular. I will explain this in four parts, one talking on what we learned from willy, one speaking on implications for this world, one speaking of the heroes, and one speaking of the one who could have taken the title of “big bad”, aka THE villain of the story.

Let’s start with this Helos character. A figure in Marlyean history. He slayed “the devil” of humanity. He represented the victors of the eldian civil war, Marley. He is a hero that saved the entire human race from the evil genocidal Eldian empire. At least, that is what they tell us at first. Make it seem that Marley history is right and therefore they are somehow justified in their horrific crimes against humanity when it pertains to Eldians.

However, this isn’t true. Willy Tybur’s discussion with McGath proves that. He tells McGath that Helos is fake, an empty symbol, as empty as the existence of the Marley super state. There was no hero, at all. Helos doesn’t exist. He is an empty idea of Marlean supremacy over Eldians on the mainland. Though it gets even more pathetic than that.

During his speech on that stage, Willy revealed Helos was simply a figure created by King Karl Fritz and Tybur family to further make the Eldian civil war a loss for both sides. It was a cruel game of pure evil on their part, giving Marley a false idol as well as a protagonist to a story where there was no hero, and no villain. Unless you like me, see Karl Fritz as a villain, but that is a personal opinion.

This suggests that the ideal of a hero is simply that, an ideal. In the world our characters find themselves, you don’t get a choice. You don’t get to be the hero or the villain, you are either a pawn, or someone with power who abuses you for their own sick amusement. This alone leads me to believe that there is no hero of this story.

A story where the group that would serve as our primary villain, the Marley government has zero participation aside from ordering attacks against Paradise, it only makes sense we wouldn’t get a traditional hero. There is no way to overcome this in a heroic way. The heroic actions simply aren’t possible. Choices are limited as it is, there is no hope for the characters to get the chance to be a hero. They are either die before they get their chance, or they live long enough to commit horrific acts for the cause they deem to be noble.

However, this doesn’t mean they have to be villains. In fact aside from Marley’s government, the original Paradise government, and the terrorist organization known as the Restorationists I really don’t see any classic villains, and none of these groups have direct things they do within the main story, only things that happen off screen or in flashbacks. Once again, the villains I listed are my personal bias, not any canon confirmation.

Now in this story we had two primary candidates to be the big hero who saves the day. Those being Eren Yeager and Reiner Braun. However, we all know they have done far too many horrible things to ever be truly considered heroes. Instead, Isyama decided to do something interesting, in a cast of anti-heroes, he has focused on these two anti-heroes in particular. With good reason, they have massive followings and are arguably the ones that generate the most controversy. Not only that, they serve as the perfect archnemisis for one another.

Let’s start with Reiner. Starting off as a seeming mentor figure for Eren, you already are inclined to like him. The boom, he is the armored titan and his main goal is to for reasons unknown kidnap Eren and return to his home town. He has murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in that name, even personally leading the murder of Marco after stupidly talking about his plans in broad daylight.

Oh but wait, back in Marley he is the oppressed class in a Nazi nation. He is kind and caring to kids, and feels genuine remorse for what he did to Paradisians. However, he has decided that in the name of peace and his family, that his only option is to keep serving this government and work with his seemingly genocidal war chief on his plans for totally annihilation of Paradise. Oh Reiner, if only you knew that Zeke was even worse than Marley.

Now let’s talk about Eren. He starts off as our heroic protagonist, always fighting for the little guy. Suffering at the hands of his friends who betray him, and his own government who wants him tortured and dead. Fighting against all odds for even the hope of freedom for his people. Oh, and to make things worse, suddenly there is this aggressive nation across the sea and a world that wants to commit a genocide on their island. Oh, and then your government decides you’re a weapon, you’re friend is a breeding animal, and that they want to be colonized that is nice.

Then boom, heel turn so to speak. He attacks Librerio killing hundreds of innocents and forcing the SC, who has been content to let the government do their stupid things to get involved. He is jailed, and then rebels against the military dictatorship and against his friends and tears into his two best friends and throws them in prison. He is “the bad guy now”.

Now Reiner wants to be a hero and Eren wants freedom for himself and his people. Both arguably noble goals, but do they ever do fucked up shit to achieve them. Now given the situation I understand entirely, at least those two aren’t forcing this conflict on their kids, unlike a certain terrorist group and two particular characters who shall not be named but we all know who they are. Interesting enough to say the least.

Now onto the man who had potential to be either an anti-hero or the main villain. That is right, Zeke Yeager is here at last. He could have made an interesting anti-hero, trying to kidnap his little brother from the evil Paradise and bring him to be a good little eldian in Marley. Or he could have been a Joker esque villain to the Marley cast and have snapped in Marley and forced the warriors to bring down their beloved pure evil war chief. Now Isyama had plans for neither much to his credit.

Zeke’s goal is pretty simple, euthanize his people and let Paradise activate the rumbling to wipe them out.. Oh yay good for him. His goal is something he deems noble, but boy would anyone with half of a brain see it as fucked up.

Now from his perspective as a traumatized child mixed with his psychopathic love of killing people and enjoying doing it, even seeing it as “freeing them”, it makes perfect sense and makes him a benevolent hero. In reality, it couldn’t be more fucked up.

This is what puts him in a different class than most of the cast. He meets a text book definition for anti-villain. Without him to be able to serve as a true “big bad”, there is no need for a Helos like character to even appear. It is far to late at this point. No one matches that bill.

Now in all fairness, I think if we got a Helos like character at this point it would be a disservice to the story. It would ruin the morality challenging themes, and it would ruin his goal for a more non-traditional approach to telling his story.

The need for the cast to remain the same as it is now couldn’t be more clear. There will be no traditional hero in Attack on Titan, because the world it is in, is a world in which there can be no heroes, the situation prevents it.

Now remember, this is my biased opinion and take oin the story. I am not claiming any of this to be canon.

#{{meanwhile on namek}}; ooc #aot meta #snk meta #my meta #here it is #long post #snk 117 #snk 117 spoilers #i am tired of this hero debate #there is no hero #bye now

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janeaustentextposts · 6 years ago

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What’s your take on Fanny’s relationship with Sir Thomas? TBH one of my favorite father/daughter dynamics in Austen’s novels.

It’s been a good decade since I last visited Mansfield Park in full, so I can’t say I got much of a lingering impression of Sir Thomas’ dynamic with Fanny. I’m going back to read, in particular, how he behaves with regards to Henry Crawford’s proposal. Compared to Mrs. Norris, Sir Thomas is certainly a less insidious figure, but I don’t know if I then can categorize that as…more benevolent, if that makes sense? His relationships with his own children are not what I’d call warm and natural–they seem to fear/revere him as a distant paternal figure, and certainly no one confides in him. Every one of the Bertram children is ultimately a little wayward in their own fashion, and Fanny’s subordinate position in the household perhaps makes their dynamic different, simply because there is less friction. She is very much beholden to his good grace, and she knows it–she has less right than his own children to claim a home and education at Mansfield Park which is far better than what her own parents could have afforded her. She is obliging and supportive to Lady Bertram, and I can certainly see Sir Thomas being fond of the way that Fanny’s innate gratitude, as well as her moral superiority (and lack of being spoiled) compels her to better behaviour than is found in Maria or Julia, especially.

Sir Thomas, whether aware of it or not, comes to rely on this tractability in Fanny, which is evident in his lengthy speech to her of his disappointment and disgust when she refuses Henry Crawford’s proposal. He’s all compliments and concern and affability when Fanny is being a biddable, good sort of girl, but the moment she expresses the slightest resistance, he grows thunderously displeased. He has a sense of noblesse oblige, in the order of his world, and is content to leave the raising of Fanny to Mrs. Norris, rather than overly taxing himself or even his wife to closely follow the girl’s upbringing and care. He seems to momentarily regret this when he sees Fanny has no fire, and realizes, at least, the unnecessary deprivation of material comforts she has suffered…but then he is quick to excuse Mrs. Norris by some vague acknowledgement that she Meant Well and he knows Fanny is too good a person to hold a grudge about it…and Fanny is in no position to disagree with him, there. She views the entire scene with the horror of a schoolgirl being examined in her lessons, rather than as a fond family chat. Only when she is roused by her repulsion at the prospect of marrying Henry Crawford can she summon even the faintest objection, and this mere mistrust and modest uncertainty immediately tips Sir Thomas into a bunch of gaslighting bluster about how she cannot know what is best for herself, or what she even means by her own, few words.

He talks of Maria and Julia’s prospects, and the virtues of Mr. Crawford’s wealth and position, and it’s clear he sees the young ladies of his family, under his care, as being ultimately his which he can dispose of as he sees fit. He cannot understand Fanny’s objections to Crawford, and more than that, he cannot understand that Fanny could have any objections to Crawford, given that he has made his approval clear. He berates her for ingratitude, above all other things, and this cuts Fanny to the quick–all she has done is to exert herself to be worthy of the charity she has been shown by her relations, for the expense Sir Thomas has undertaken in bringing her to Mansfield Park, and now it has all been for nothing, because he thinks the very worst of her for not being guided meekly by his opinions. He relents a little, merely as strategy, thinking that perhaps she could use a little time to get used to the idea, but very nearly insists she go and refuse Mr. Crawford (for a second time, face to face, after she dismissed his initial declaration, and then wrote back to Mary’s sly letter refusing to allow any talk of an engagement,) and he only stops himself because he realizes Fanny looks frightful after having CRIED SO HARD and thinks it might scare Henry off, if he sees her like that.

He then goes down to dismiss Crawford himself, and he plays it like he’s doing Fanny a favour. “Of course he left, of course when he heard how upset you were he withdrew like a gentleman…but of course he wanted five minutes alone with you and of course I promised he could have them so, like, let’s say tomorrow, if you could please calm down before then. And for now, don’t talk to anyone else about this or let on that anything untoward has happened.”

And Fanny is GRATEFUL to him for that. She sees it as a consideration, that she is going to be spared Mrs. Norris’ reproach on the matter. Mrs. Norris is a monster and I won’t pretend otherwise, but it feels very weird to me that Fanny’s metric for kindness is so skewed that repression and an extremely brief reprieve is seen as a favour Sir Thomas is doing her. She’s modest and naive enough that she doesn’t see his motives in buying a little time, either–he wants no one to speak of it so that no rumours of Mr. Crawford’s failure could spread–he wants to let all he has said to marinate in Fanny’s consciousness for a day, and let her have no chance to mull the matter over with input from anybody else: if she escapes being berated by Mrs. Norris, she likewise can’t even talk the matter over with someone potentially more kind and understanding, like Lady Bertram. Sir Thomas even mentions his wife by name, and says HE will not tell her. Again, interestingly, this is couched in language which is conciliatory, as if he’s doing Fanny a great favour by not even talking it over with his own wife…but then the implication is that if he isn’t saying a word to Lady Bertram, Fanny certainly may not. Lady Bertram is not the aunt Fanny fears, and he knows this.

He later gives orders for her to have a fire lit in her sitting-room, every day in the winter, and this further compounds Fanny’s guilt…and I’d be shocked if this wasn’t behind Sir Thomas’ apparent altruism, too. I just don’t see his motives as being too pure, after all that he says to her in the wake of her refusal of Henry. She trusts that Sir Thomas is a good man, and that he will understand her position, in time. And perhaps he could, if Fanny could explain it, and if the time given was the time allowed for Crawford’s true nature to come out, in his behaviour towards Maria. Sir Thomas has not counted on the way that Fanny’s consultation within herself, with her own knowledge of what is right, strengthens her resolve, even in the face of his manipulation of her guilt. His games and bullying do not work on her, in the long run, though in the short term they make her very miserable, indeed. Fanny’s whole point is that her emotional isolation within the Mansfield Park household has made her reliant on her own moral instincts, and this is so inward that nobody but those who know her very well might see it. Sir Thomas simply doesn’t know her well enough to alter his tactics, and his patriarchal position in his own family and patterns of behaviour have, until this point, given him no reason to attempt that change. To his mind, Fanny is the one who must be worked upon and made to take his views as her own.

And then, after he has given every indication that Fanny need not expect to have to face Henry Crawford until the next day, she is suddenly summoned to his study after tea in the evening, which would have been served after dinner, which easily places the event between 7 or 9 o’clock at night–he can’t even let Fanny have the repose of one night to sleep on it, but forces her to face Henry, then. Henry, interestingly, displays a dogged determination which rather reminds me of Mr. Collins’ proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, thinking that her delicacy might prevent her from knowing her own feelings, and thinking that her resistance may be some design (deliberate or unconscious) to heap further fuel upon his thwarted desire. He thinks Fanny merely too modest and young to be anything other than momentarily overwhelmed–and that, once she sees things his way, she will of course accept him. Sir Thomas has evidently said nothing to Crawford to indicate otherwise. (Because of course men listen more readily to other men than to when a woman has clearly and often said No Thanks.) Fanny is still being worked on by her feelings of gratitude, her obligation to Sir Thomas’ expectations as well as Henry’s own involvement in helping secure her dear brother’s promotion in his career. This wasn’t the five minutes Sir Thomas had told Fanny to expect–it takes an HOUR, and Henry is not remotely put off by her rejection. Sir Thomas, too, listens more to Crawford, with more pity for Crawford, than for any consideration of Fanny’s feelings, the following day. They strategize together for Henry’s success.

“Everything was said that could encourage, every encouragement received with grateful joy, and the gentlemen parted the best of friends.”

I find myself obliged to point out the motherfucking patriarchy at work, here.

Sir Thomas decides to aim for kindness, but resolves to do everything in his power to delicately undermine Fanny’s resistance, to make it clear that everyone in her family wishes her to marry Mr. Crawford. He promises that they’ll all behave as if it never happened, and never mention the matter again, except he kind of has to bring it up again to tell Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris because Henry has zero chill and it’s not like Sir Thomas can tell him to check himself for the sake of Fanny’s comfort. He continues to believe in Mrs. Norris’ good intentions, though there’s a very dry line about her being, in his opinion, almost “one of those well-meaning people who are always doing mistaken and very disagreeable things.” Like, he realizes she is CONSTANTLY A THORN IN EVERYBODY’S SIDE but of course it’s easier for him to not deal with it, so he’s just going to insist she’s not REALLY an asshole.

In the days that follow, Sir Thomas does everything in his power to get Fanny to break down her objections to Henry, even going so far as to endorse the scheme of her visit to Portsmouth, thinking the sinking back into comparative poverty will make her see the value of a good income. His stance is clear: “…he was master at Mansfield Park. When he had really resolved on any measure, he could always carry it through…” and given that he let Maria marry Mr. Rushworth, it’s clear that he does not value anybody’s feelings more highly than status and wealth, and Crawford’s alleged passion is merely another lever Sir Thomas sees to use to make Fanny settle as he wants her to settle.

Perhaps Sir Thomas is more indulgent to Fanny when she’s a child, and more contrite when Henry’s elopement with Maria has justified Fanny’s suspicion, but on the basis of his treatment of Fanny in the middle of the novel when she is so clearly distressed and determinedly stating her conviction that she and Henry would both be miserable, I’m going to have to disagree with the supposition that theirs is a sweet and healthy parent-figure sort of relationship.

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen #Mansfield Park #Anonymous

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urfavmurtad · 6 years ago

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hey i really like reading your posts even though i don't follow you or interact with your posts at all because i don't want any of my tumblr friends to know i'm not religious lol. my question is this, as someone who has also left islam and its bull shit behind: how did you arrive at atheism instead of another religion or general spirituality? what was the process of that? i still don't know what i believe, even though i know that i don't believe in islam.

Thank you anon, and huh! I don’t think anyone’s asked me that before. I dunno, it just kind of… happened, tbh. Like I feel no need to believe in any sort of higher power or deity, there’s nothing about theism in general that appeals to me. I’ve read a lot about other religions since I left Islam and I can certainly appreciate many things about them. But none of the actual theology grabs me. Not to sound like an edgelord, but I can’t convince myself that miracles from 3000 years ago were real events. They make nice stories and I’ll always enjoy reading the history behind them (and The Prince of Egypt had some fantastic animation), but there is a 0% chance of me believing these things actually happened. If a god wants me to believe in him, his ass can send someone who can make miracles now. There are zero convincing reasons that any miracle-based religion offers for why their god of choice can’t send someone to perform miracles in the age of, you know, cameras.

In addition to that, while Islam has its own unique awfulness related to a very wide range of topics, it shares some problems with a lot of other religions. I hate the whole concept of disbelievers being hellbound, I think it’s genuinely cruel and awful, and I would never follow any religion that advocated for similar ideas. There is no way to reconcile “merciful god who cares about humanity” and “god who sends kind people to hell if they refuse to worship him”. And combining that with the concept of an all-knowing god who knows who will go to heaven or hell before they’re even born is extra shitty. Muslims and members of similar faiths can justify it to themselves all they want, but it will always be fucked up to me. Anything based on something like “follow my rules or suffer eternally” is a manipulative ideology imo.

As for a general belief in a higher power, my personal feeling is that any belief in a god who cares about humans at all does not make sense.

For example, say I make dua for passing a math test and then I get a good grade on it. A lady makes dua for her sick child and the child dies. I could attribute my success in passing the test to divine intervention (instead of the facts that I studied hard and the test wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be). But if that’s the case… why’d Allah answer my prayer while refusing to answer the mother’s? Why’d he care more about me getting an A- in calculus than a child living to see another day? There is no religion, as far as I’m concerned, that has a good answer for this. (Except for our wise polytheistic forefathers, who said “fate is cruel and inescapable death comes for all when we least expect it, LOL!”)

In Islam, we’re always told some variant of “stop asking questions” as the standard response to this issue. There’s always an implication that Allah knows better than you do, so there’s no way your puny human mind can comprehend why these things happen. That’s not satisfactory. If the mother of the deceased child is more pious than I am and a better person than I am and in a more serious situation than I am, but he still refuses to answer her pleas because they’re not part of The Plan, what’s even the value of prayer? It’s just a crapshoot as to whether your dua ends up in Allah’s spam folder or not because “Allah’s mind is unknowable” or “what is meant to happen will happen”.

To me, that just rules out the existence of a god who answers prayers (at least on any sort of logical basis). So I see no value in prayer tbh, or any value in doing anything to worship any higher power that might or might not exist, cuz the bitch clearly don’t care bout us. I’m just gonna live my life and not worry about it. Hopefully if she/he/it does exist, they are at least more chill than Allah’s needy, narcissistic ass.

The tragic “counterarguments” that religious people always make to points like this are all the same. “What if you’re wrong? Are you willing to bet your soul on it?” Yes, I am willing to “bet my soul” that Mr. Flying Donkey Man was a bullshitter, thanks. “But isn’t life meaningless if there’s no afterlife?” I would love to believe in a heaven where everyone lives on forever, even though I don’t believe in it. But no, the lack of an afterlife doesn’t make me feel like the life I’m living right now has any less meaning. “But how could all of this have come from nothing?!?!?!” I don’t know how the universe was created. We could all be living in a giant sim like that one shitty Star Ocean game. But I do know that the creation stories religious people believe in are myths, so they’ve got nothing to offer me.

I hope this doesn’t come across as like… atheist dawah, because I genuinely don’t mind or care if people have some vague spirituality or belief in a higher power. I’ve talked to people here who have left Islam for Judaism, Christianity, and even one who is now a follower of Bahai. In addition to several tumblr witches who do tarot readings and stuff. If any of that calms people and gives them a sense of peace, that’s great and y’all are valid, but it’s just not something I personally get anything out of. So… that’s where my mind is at anon. Take your time figuring your own mind out, there’s no need to rush something like this.

#ask #anon #atheism #ex muslim

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jemiroka · 7 years ago

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Idolish7 - A theory on Musubi Takanashi

After the most recent translation release of part 3 chapter 10.3, a few thoughts came up about Tsumugi’s mother, Musubi. Particularly about her cause of death. SPOILER ALERT under the cut.

So we all know that by the time Idolish7 actually starts, Tsumugi’s mother has already passed and our loving manager is already an independent young lady breaking out into the world on her own. Of course we always see mentions of Otoharu, her father, since he’s alive and kicking (and her boss) but we never really hear much about her mother.

There are a few moments when she’s mentioned in passing by Otoharu and Tsumugi, but no details are shared with the audience and we’re simply left to assume that she died of natural causes. The only other times we ever hear about Musubi, is from Sousuke. He is where I think we can get most of our clues from.

In part 3, chapter 10.3, we learn that Hanamaki Sumire, a female idol from a rival agency, has pretty much been manipulated to be the instigator of a scandal in an industry battle between Tsukumo and Yaotome Productions that ended up implicating Ryunosuke. As a result, she’s been dropped from her agency and asks that Sousuke come to see her at her hotel room. He knows that this is a trap to ruin his reputation and refuses to comply. However, when Anesagi mentions that she’s feeling cornered and is mentioning suicide, Sousuke changes his mind. If anyone has a heart and they understand the gravity of the situation, they would definitely reconsider, but what got me thinking was what happened next.

(Source: http://seigyokus.tumblr.com/post/177261274442)

So why do his thoughts go straight to Musubi after the mention of suicide. So here’s my theory...

What if Musubi committed suicide?

They’ve never mentioned her death in the story and perhaps there’s more of a reason than that it just never came up. What if it’s simply too sad for the Takanashi family to ever talk about? There was another instance in part 1 that had a number of fans wondering if there was any deep meaning behind Sousuke’s words.

Why would Sousuke accuse Otoharu of driving her to her grave if it was of natural causes like we had all assumed? Why did he feel so adamant of the fact that he could have made her happier (other than just being the jealous 3rd person in the love triangle)? If she did actually commit suicide, then Sousuke’s outburst makes complete sense.

This is where my main theory ends. Based on the clues that we’ve gotten so far about Musubi, we can, sadly, assume that Musubi’s cause of death was suicide.

However, when combined with another popular theory floating around, we can actually bolster this theory -

Other theory: Musubi or Otoharu was Zero.

This is probably one of my favorite theories floating around the fandom - that one of the Takanashis was Zero. I’m not going to repeat the details behind this theory since but you can find a well done post on it here: http://riku7se.tumblr.com/post/171825630768/ive-seen-you-talk-about-this-theory-on-twitter-on

For this instance I’m going to follow the theory thread that Musubi was Zero.

If Musubi was actually Zero then a motive for suicide becomes obvious. What if she was struggling with keeping up with her popularity? What if the pressure to please the public just became too much for her? With all of those eyes on you it’s very possible to crack under the pressure. With Zero’s popularity being the way it was, time with family also could have been very scarce. This could easily cause her to think that she maybe disappointing her family especially when she’s a mother with a young daughter.

Based on the pt2 visuals we know that Zero wore a mask. And it may even be possible that Zero ALWAYS wore a mask which could attribute to why Haruki and Takamasa weren’t even sure where to start looking for Zero when Zero disappeared. AND, if she was masquerading as a man the whole time (and this is under the assumption that her voice is a lot more androgynous than Tsumugi), maintaining a double life for some people is enough to frustrate someone to a point that they feel unable to accept themselves.

On the flip side, if Otoharu were Zero, his time away from the family to pursue Zero’s career also could have been too much for her to manage on her own. However, I’d like to challenge the idea of Otoharu being Zero. If that were the case, it wouldn’t make sense for Haruki to be looking for Zero in Northmare but then suggest Nagi send his music to Takanashi Productions because he knows Otoharu will take good care of the music. This implies that Otoharu was more in an administrative/management role than a performing one if Haruki was familiar with his work practices.

So if Musubi were Zero, Otoharu obviously would be involved or extremely familiar with Zero’s career. What was mentioned in the game’s story in part 2 is that Otoharu already knew that the music that was being sent to him was Haruki’s because it was his style.

------

And that’s really it for my theory. The main point of it all was that I believe that Musubi’s cause of death was a suicide (...I hate this...) but I also think that this theory ties in very well with the idea that Musubi could actually be Zero.

I hope to hear more of what you guys think. I’m completely open to people poking holes in this theory and discussing other possibilities because, obviously, I really hope that the Takanashi family back story is not this sad...

On a side note... I’m surprised I’d never heard about a theory like this yet from the japanese fans. They’re cracking codes in the lyrics and pics and stuff so I feel like we’re missing something that disproves this theory if japanese fans haven’t come to this conclusion O.O

#Idolish7 #Idolish Seven #i7 #ainana #my theory #crack theory #musubi takanashi #otoharu takanashi #tsumugi takanashi #sousuke yaotome

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bluerosesburnblue · 6 years ago

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Liz Liveblogs Bravely Second: Chapter 5, Part 2/2

And now for the actual story of Chapter 5: This is Our Coup de Gravy!

There were... so many Coup de Gravies in this chapter. Too many. It seems like everyone had one

You know, thinking about the Sidequest Roundup last time, I don’t think I’ve ever said how much I love the way Bravely handles obtaining jobs. It would be so easy to just hand you a magic job crystal at different story beats, but no. You have to fight someone using the job you wish to obtain. You have to figure out how it works and overcome its abilities at their most powerful before you can use them against others. It serves as both a neat tutorial for how the job works, since you’re on the receiving end of most of its attacks, and proof that you deserve to have the job since you overcame its user. It feels earned every time you get a new job. It’s kinda like how I feel about the Island Trials in Pokémon Sun and Moon, where you have to fight a difficult boss of a specific elemental type, and once you do you gain the ability to use the strongest move of that type. I dunno, I just really like this trend in games of proving your worth for the skills you gain by besting them in combat

Anyway, let’s head on to the Harena Sea Caves to stop Geist from performing his heist

You could absolutely stab a man with that compass

Oh, come on, Edea. When did you get possessed by Rev? Just now? When we walked in? How long have you secretly been a ghost child?

Heyyy Templar Braev to the rescue! TBH, I’d stop running if Edea’s dad was staring me down

Wait... Geist didn’t recognize him until he said his name? Dude, like, even NPC #67 knows Braev, get with the program!

I wonder if the exploit I used to insta-kill Rev the first time will work again. I also wonder if Geist might be able to undo that

Oh, it’s backstory time. Geist left his ill son because he got called to do an exorcism in a foreign country. I guess he was probably a priest, fitting with the Bestiary tidbit of his name, Grace, being given to those respected by the Orthodoxy. But the girl wasn’t possessed, she was sick. Patient Zero for the Great Plague. And she was taken onto his boat because she wanted to go home one last time. But she was used to spread the disease around. He still blames himself for what happened and wants to make up for both spreading the Plague and his botched attempt to revive his son

Geist may be the bigger problem with his Undo abilities, so I’m gonna focus on him

Rev actively refused to move on because he loved his daddy and didn’t want to go without him. Ohhhhh my god, kiddo, that’s so sweet in a morbid way

Stop being dramatic, Geist. Best timeline rules dictate that we’re keeping you alive. You’re not dead. Relax

Undo HP after Rev possessed someone does work, it just took him until he was about halfway down to start possessing people

This poor kid’s in a tough spot. I don’t expect him to understand the full implications of “rewrite time to fix things.” He just thinks they’re gonna make everything better. He doesn’t understand the Butterfly Effect, and how it’ll erase the future. He just thinks what he’s doing will make his dad happy, so he’s gonna do it

At least we got through to Geist. Changing the past could wipe his son from existence. A second “death,” if you would. And harming Rev is the one thing he could never do

Now that is a cute hug. even if it’s between a man drenched in blood and the ghost of his son possessing armor that’s a full head taller than him

And Geist does know Braev... but on a personal level. Braev was a young priest back when he worked with the Orthodoxy

And there it is. Geist sent a warning back, which allowed them to gather a team of physicians to find a cure. The Plague would have been much worse without that warning, but all Geist can see are the people who died in the first place

And he finally gets some closure. His son doesn’t care that he’s a ghost in a suit of armor, he’s just happy that he can stay with his dad. And his actions did save plenty of people. It’s just that the guilt has been crippling him for years. Now that he’s free, he’s allowing himself to be arrested for crimes of the present, and no longer for assumed crimes of the past

I really appreciate Edea’s speech to Rev here. She talks about how she used to blindly believe everything her dad told her until the events of the last game. It broke her heart to fight him, but ultimately, in doing so, she started to actually understand him instead of just parroting what he said. And when they met again? It was as equals, and their bond was stronger than it had ever been. So she encourages Rev to come up with his own ideas, try to understand his father’s, and then come together as equals. Truly understanding each other, instead of blind faith, because that’s the best way to support your loved ones. And she says this all in front of Braev, too, and the pride he feels towards her is so evident. It’s moments like this that make this game a great sequel. Edea’s come so far from the person she was at the start of the last game, but she’s still not flat in this one. Sure, the focus is more on Yew and Magnolia’s development, while Tiz and Edea had the brunt of it in the last game, but our returning party members are still growing, too, and it’s nice to see them in a mentor role

Phase 2 of Magnolia’s plan: use the compass to lure out the Kaiser. Unfortunately, it seems something’s come up on Kamiizumi’s end of this plan, so now we’re off to Florem Gardens to help

Also, I love how Kamiizumi is so useless with the pendant call. He can’t work the thing at all

On to Florem Gardens. Good to see my old grinding grounds are doing well. I’ll be back for more next chapter!

Aww, they called Edea’s dad with the pendant. It’s really nice to see them getting along in this game

Yew’s call to Norzen didn’t go half as well, though. Turns out Norzen, Braev, and Kamiizumi have a shrubbery group chat

Altair is now telling them about how he and Vega would call each other using cell phones and video phones. The more things change, the more couples keep talking forever on the phone playing “No you hang up”

Chill, Kamiizumi, I’m like, one screen away. We’ll be there in two minutes

Oh dear lord Angelo set up shop in the forest. And Aimee’s here, too. Time to beat her down using her own job I guess

So they think the last timeline was a dream, but Angelo’s memories of Aimee’s dying words spurred them on to being an actual couple. Also, they’re still gonna fight us, because definitely fight people who made you mad in (what you assume are) dreams?

Also, Aimee is literally from Florem Gardens. They met there. That’s why the shop’s there

Some neat tactics going on with them, with Angelo inflicting the party with fire weakness and then having Aimee use Firehead to give all her attacks fire damage. Not much else of note though

And Yew just totally hired them to open up shop in Gathelatio. Not... sure they deserve it, but I guess they were the least attached to the Kaiser’s plan in the first place

...thanks for all the help, Kamiizumi

Oh good lord there’s so many cats here. I see where this is going. We’re gonna have to take on Minette, aren’t we

Kamiizumi’s cat’s here. Forgot that was a plot thread

Hide the compass in Sagitta? With how easily Geist got in? I don’t know if that’s the best plan

Ah, I see. We’re feeding the cats false information to report to Minette, who will lead the Kaiser right into our SP Cannon’s blast. Not a bad plan

Of course Tiz is “all catted out.” He’s been my dedicated Catmancer for a long freaking time

Alright, Elder Sirius. Time to shoot that Skyhold out of the sky

I appreciate Yew’s conviction in stopping Denys. He may be his brother, but he’s also gone (or about to go) too far. And I’m sure Yew feels responsible for it, since this all started after Denys lost his hand due to Yew’s mistake

Making Yew be the one to fire the cannon seems a BIT cruel to me, though

I can’t believe that plan actually worked

Minette’s gonna buy time for Denys, Janne, and Nikolai to escape, and they’re all treating it like she’s gonna die, but guys. We haven’t killed a single person this timeline. We have fought six of your people and the worst they got is prison! You really think we’re gonna kill the kid and only the kid?

You can see Denys actively fighting with his Big Brother Instinct to protect the kid. But he renounced that to be the Kaiser. Best he can do now is send the lion with her, just in case

Please. Child. Just stop the cat puns. You keep making it so tempting to actually kill you

Okay, I know this kid was experimented on and crossed with cat DNA or something equally ridiculous, but her backstory and mannerisms REALLY say “I’m a cat who was turned into a human”

She became a cat to... please her mom? What? Why would her mom be upset her daughter WASN’T a cat? Did the experiment fail? Or did she just have a kid and go “you know, I should’ve just adopted a cat instead”

Holy shit, I was gonna say “not a hard fight” but then Minette got off a lucky full-party Catnap+RIP combo and totally wiped the team

Definitely sticking a Clothespin on Yew this time

I probably went about that in the dumbest way possible, but we beat her

Child! I will take you in if you just! Stop! The cat puns! That’s it! That’s all I ask of you! Maybe people are abandoning you because every time you open your mouth you make yourself as insufferable as possible!

Oh no Kamiizumi just adopted her. Dude... dude please break her of the cat pun habit

Hey! She’s not a cat! She’s a human who thinks she’s a cat! Stop telling her she can sleep in front of the fire all day every day! How about you freaking rehabilitate the kid and then send her to school like Gho

You are adopting a daughter, not a pet

Minette is one of the worst characters in this whole series. I can’t even muster any sympathy for her because all she is is a GIMMICK with a cute face. She isn’t even a character! She’s just the human embodiment of cat puns! And I hate it!

So Norzen, Rifa, and Pudgius just enchanted a crystal to trap the Skyhold. Guess we’re storming it again already, huh? I’ve gotta say, after the Empire being constantly one step ahead last timeline, it’s nice to be the ones in control for a change

And Norzen knew Minette’s mom. He was working to make a cure for the Plague. It killed so many that it mostly died down, but they saw that it was going to make a comeback, even worse than before. Minette’s mom noticed that no cat got infected, so she used them as the base for her vaccine, and tested it on herself. And died. But not before giving the vaccine to Minette, who the scientists took in and studied, and in doing so found the cure they needed to stop the Plague for good. Nope. Still feel nothing for Minette. This is a half-assed justification for making a Walking Gimmick. Minette could be deleted from existence and I would not care and it is entirely to do with the fact that her entire character is Cats™ and Abandonment Issues™ with no further substance

Back to the Skyhold. The big diamond in the center is looking quite a bit worse for wear now that the SP cannon landed a direct hit on it

I hate this stupid dungeon and its useless map that does a really awful job of showing how platforms overlap

On the way back to where we fought Anne. Everyone’s treating this as a point of no return, but I’ve gotta wonder about that considering there’s three jobs, one summon, and several more Catmancy skills left in locations that I can’t access yet

“Regrets... are like rutabagas - far better overcooked than left untouched in the pantry.” Altair I have never eaten a rutabaga in my life, your metaphor is lost on me

Oh, we’re finally going to hear about Vega. Good, I was looking for a reason to be invested in Altair and his story

Wait... Altair’s from the Celestial Realm? Does that make him a Celestial? Does he know the Celestial/Player from the first game (and probably also this one, since I’m assuming it’s the same Celestial guiding the party both times)? ...is he aware that I’ve been making fun of his metaphors and the way he pronounces his name for a while now?

Vega was his wife. A great Calamity befell the Celestial Realm, so they planned to take a ship and flee to Luxendarc... but Vega never made it to the ship. Altair didn’t realize she wasn’t onboard until after the ship had left on its one-way trip to another dimension. He doesn’t say it outright, but he probably doesn’t even know why she never made it or if she’s even alive anymore. He never said goodbye to his wife. He wasn’t expecting to need to. The last time he saw her was never supposed to be the last

Since a female voice narrates the ends of chapters, and what seems to be Altair’s theme plays there, I can only assume that that’s Vega. I don’t think she’s THE Celestial that guides the party, but I do wonder if the two know each other and The Celestial/Player is showing her what they’re seeing. Or maybe just intercepting messages from her

Yeah, I’m sure this is a “final” battle and your backstory is entirely irrelevant, Altair. The Kaiser is definitely the Big Bad, just like Braev was last game. Definitely

So I have Magnolia as a Black Mage and the brim of her hat is just barely covering her eyes. It almost looks like she’s trying to hide tears behind it, which is especially noticeable since she had the biggest reaction to Altair’s story

“With the right dressing, a simple piece of lettuce can become a salad.” Have you ever even eaten a salad before because it takes more than one piece of lettuce to make those. Otherwise it’s just lettuce with some sauce on it

Altair, we both ship Yew/Magnolia, but maybe lay off the kid a little? I know your romance went poorly, but I have no intention of letting these kids die. That only ever happens accidentally

“Give Tiz the pendant. ...I believe he has something to tell someone.” Agnès probably already knows... but I think they both need to hear it spoken. Two years can be a painfully long time to wait just to hear someone say “I love you, too.”

And all I can think of during this is poor Edea. I think she loves Alternis... but as a brother. The Alternis that she’s in love with, the one who grew and changed, the one she shared an adventure with, who she came to care for beyond their shared history but as an equal... well as far as she knows he isn’t in this dimension anymore. She’s already had her Altair/Vega situation, a goodbye that never was. Of course, if my theory’s right and one of the Alternises running around is Ringabel, then she may have another chance. But as for now... she just has to sit here listening to her new family get resolutions that have been lost to her

So I did end up grinding out the Bestiary entries for Skyhold just on the off-chance it was a one-time location and let me just say: Ranger Edea is terrifyingly strong and I love her

Dammit, Denys, just stay still so I can fight you, rip your sword out of your robot hand, and then steal your job!

Oh fuck OFF, Janne!

“In the end, you understood me. You’re a true friend, Yew.” Yeah, he’s a much better friend to you than you are to him. It’s a two-way street! So kindly take that newfound modicum of introspection and use it for something, you brat

So it’s a Janne/Nikolai dual boss as they cover Denys’s escape. My team’s level 65 and pretty damn tough at the moment, though. Nikolai’s gonna have a hell of a time trying to out-heal Tiz’s Exorcism HP Undos and Janne’s barely gonna make a dent with Yew’s Spellcraft-boosted Healing

“Now isn’t the time to wallow in sentiment!” Sure, Janne. “Stop thinking about the past!” Yep. Sure. You fucking hypocrite

Whaaaaaaat the fuck was that rumbling. What did you three idiots doooooo!?

Don’t know why Nikolai thought using Sacrifice was a good idea. Janne’s really useless on his own

Guys. We haven’t killed anyone this timeline. Stop being dramatic! We aren’t going to kill you. ...but you are going to prison for Mook #4′s death, Janne. You brought that one on yourself

“Only death can stop us” or some really good chains, you know

Atta boy, Yew. Don’t compromise your own morals for these idiots

“You can still change the world without destroying the past!” And that’s the crux of this whole game, isn’t it? What’s done is done. We’d all like to go back and change things. It seems like it would be so easy to erase the mistakes of our lives... but things aren’t that simple. How much good can come of the bad? If the Plague hadn’t happened, a cure never would have been developed, and the technologies and medicine that arose from it can be used to great benefit in the future, and so on. This is a game about accepting the bad and moving on. Working not to undo your mistakes, but fix them and be better the next time similar situations arise. And as someone who struggles a lot with self-blame, that’s really powerful to me

“But... what about my revenge!?” Oh. MY GOD!!! I get that you’re 16 and moral complexity seems to fly right over your head, Janne, but have you listened to nothing this entire game!? I actually hate you more than Minette, and she makes insufferable cats puns every. Fucking. Sentence. I swear you two are the worst goddamn characters in this game. Give. It. A. REST

Oh, so Janne’s motives are entirely selfish, too. Because according to him, he’s not looking to see his family again. He’s not looking to bring back his parents because he loves them and thinks they deserved better. No, he just wants to undo the years of emotional suffering and living on the streets he had to go through in the aftermath, and he’s taking it out on everybody else

God, fuck, why do people like this character!? Is it because he falls into the “tortured-but-physically-attractive character with a tragic backstory, so even if they do awful things they’re sympathetic so I can change them (or have the other participant in a ship with them do so)” archetype? Because fuck that archetype, it’s been romanticized to hell and back and I have literally always hated it. I’m not shy about my distaste for Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars films, a certain villain from Pokémon Sun and Moon, Merula Snyde in Hogwarts Mystery, and I’m certainly not shy about my distaste for Janne Balestra, the most self-centered brat in existence still trying to pretend that just having a tragic backstory somehow justifies all of the shitty things he’s done in this game, with no effort to make amends on his part. People don’t deserve to get off with no consequences like that!

“What am I supposed to do!?” How about you grow the fuck up, listen to what we’ve been telling you this whole game, and stop taking your frustrations out on everybody! Get a therapist! Open up an orphanage or something so other kids don’t end up on the street like you! You’re the one who decided that rewriting time and killing anyone with even the slightest connection to the Balestra deaths was the way to handle this. Honestly, your lack of direction is not our problem to fix now that that’s out the window. The only thing Yew’s obligated to make right is his relationship with Denys

Oh, nice! Yew’s gonna hand control of the Crystalguard from House Geneolgia to the Orthodoxy. That won’t stop corruption entirely, but I’m sure Agnès will make good use of being able to control the knights sworn to protect her and her faith

And the other Houses in control of the guard are in agreement. Enough of using the Crystalguard as a tool against each other, now we’re letting Agnès decide. One, unified voice in the organization, instead of the warring factions it’s been made of

And Braev, Goodman, Norzen, and Lotus will help out, as counterbablances to Agnès, representing the needs of the four Continents (with Crystals on them. Sucks to be Caldisla, I guess)

Yew’s finally figured out who he is and what he wants out of life. He’s not just the kid following Crystalguard orders or filling in for Denys out of a sense of duty. He’s seen the corruption and he’s going to work to change it. To make the organization he was told was his to inherit into something worth inheriting. Something to be proud of. And now, he’s not doing it alone. He sounds just like a certain blonde in our party...

And Nikolai and Janne agree to help us... without even the slightest hint of an apology from Janne. Fuck you, just leave the story already

And Denys’s in the Geneolgia mausoleums beneath Gathelatio. Time to kick some sense into big bro’s ass while surrounded by the corpses of our ancestors?

I can’t help but notice the game’s letting me walk around but still hasn’t addressed the shaking during the fight. I get the feeling there’s another boss coming and it isn’t Denys

I got off Skyhold and literally nothing happened, but I don’t think that’s the end of the rumble shenanigans

Ah, making use of that tiny door next to Yew’s house. Down into the Crypts we go!

I love how Alfred’s first thought upon seeing Nikolai and Janne is “Hey, it’s you jerks who betrayed Yew! Get lost!”

And we didn’t even need Alfred, because Denys left the door open instead of locking it behind him, as would be smart. Though in his defense, the only people he’d want to stop could just use Alfred’s key, and Denys doesn’t seem like he wants Alfred to know who he is just yet so it’s safer to leave his old butler alone than sneak in and grab the key

Denys has the other key because he told Alfred he wanted to lay flowers on his mother’s grave before he was exiled. So even if her son wasn’t the favored heir of House Geneolgia, they still had the decency to bury her with the rest of the family

I love how Alfred really loves the Geneolgia kids, more than even their father. He doesn’t want to believe that Denys is the Kaiser, it seems so out of character for the boy he knew, but when it’s Yew saying it... how could he not believe?

No, Yew, let Nikolai and Janne turn themselves in to the police. I know you still hold some affection for them (despite how much Janne doesn’t deserve it) but they totally committed some atrocious crimes and need to atone in some way

“A crime is a crime. How can we hope to reform others if we cannot admit our own trespasses?” And that, right there, is why I have sympathy for Nikolai and not Janne. He’s willing to admit he did wrong, and willing to attempt to make it right. Janne may be going along with him, but he still hasn’t apologized and is throwing a minor fit about explaining himself. His behavior is beyond unsympathetic, no matter what his backstory is, and his “reformation” comes across more like he’s just doing it to please Nikolai. Like when a child begrudgingly apologizes because their parents told them to, but you can hear it in their voice that they don’t mean it

The Geneolgia Crypts. The location of the final summon, one of two remaining places with Catmancy skills... and the last story-mandated asterisk. Time to find Denys

I know it plays in a lot of locations, but I love the music in the Crypts, “Dungeon of the Nature.” It’s somber, but grand. Soft, not bombastic, but still powerful. It’s great, I’d recommend people look it up if they haven’t heard it yet

Why are there instant-kill rabbits in here

Also can’t help noticing that the other enemy types are female mummies and ghost knights. Doesn’t seem like the Geneolgia family is really at rest, does it?

So it’s a maze, where I have to light each crystal to unlock the door, huh? Not too complicated

Susano-o Obtained! He’s been changed from non-elemental to Dark, but it’s otherwise our same old friend from Default

I find it bizarre that Amaterasu is listed after Susano-o, despite unlocking earlier. I suppose most people would run into Susano-o first, since there’s literally nothing out by Amaterasu’s anchorite and no reason to go there

I also appreciate that the two “strongest” summons are named after sibling gods from Shinto mythology, though I do wish there was a Tsukuyomi to go with them, considering the abundant moon symbolism in this game

Ah, is Yew’s fear of ghosts from being down here as a kid? He says he came down to bury his father and pay his respects, but he doesn’t remember it well because he tried to forget. He didn’t want to remember how lonely his childhood was because of the emotional divide between Denys and his mother, Yew and his mother, and their father. Going off to school was his first taste of freedom

“It’s... perfect.” God, can we give Michael Sinterniklaas an award for just the delivery of that line?

Hey, Denys. Fancy seeing you in what is clearly a boss room. No hard feelings for what comes next, yeah?

OH MY GOD I put my 3DS down and the screen went black for two seconds. Scared the hell out of me I thought I was gonna have to play part of that over again

I can just leave the room. The stairs are right there. The game is letting me walk right past him and go... but that won’t solve anything, will it?

We stand at the grave of Foundar Geneolgia. Captain of the Crystalguard, first leader of the Three Cavaliers... and completely corrupt beyond belief, using his position to take out personal enemies by accusing them of being enemies of the Orthodoxy, all to keep his own power. Sometimes to gain more

This was the standard of House Geneolgia. Those who deviated, who tried to be better... what remains are unmarked gravestones. Still here, within the family, but shunned and forgotten. Even in death. Denied the opportunity to be remembered by the lives they touched and shackled by the legacy of a bloodline they were unable to escape. Lost to an underground cavern for eternity.

And that’s his goal. Denys, disgusted by his ancestors and bearing the weight of a bloodline he never asked for, planned to travel back in time and kill Foundar, erasing the entire Geneolgia line and their sins with it

He’s so caught up in his plan that he’s failed to see something that I think Yew’s already figured out: these brothers are the only members of the Geneolgia family left. They aren’t beholden to the laws of the family anymore, because who will enforce them? Each other? There’s no guarantee someone worse won’t spring up in the place of Foundar, but Yew and Denys together can take what their bloodline has been given and turn it into something worthwhile. Erasing the past is a gamble on a brighter present. Working together is a guarantee of a brighter future

*squints* There’s a single dead pixel on my screen right in the middle of Denys’s face right now and it’s driving me nuts

“So you, too, would slumber in an unmarked grave. We are more alike than I thought...” And you always have been. If you’d spoken openly to your brother, you would have noticed who he is deep in his heart. Someone who doesn’t care for money or power, who takes in and cares for others as if they were family, an idealist who wants nothing more than a better world for those they care for, even at the cost of their own life... You two make quite a pair.

This whole conflict probably could have been avoided if these two had the chance to be closer as kids. If Denys had a single family member to confide in... If Yew had someone to guide him away from the indoctrination of their father... The tragedy is that the only times they’ve been able to speak freely to each other... have been at the end of this game

It’s just a shame Denys wants to fight. He wants to be proven wrong, not just have his baby brother spout nice platitudes at him

Still, I warned this chinstrap-beard-sporting jackass. I’m going to RIP. THAT. SWORD. OUT. OF. HIS. DUMB. METAL. HAND!

(By which I mean I’m stealing the Chaos Blade, the only missable item as far as I’m aware, from him. I was just being dramatic about it so I wouldn’t forget)

No pretense of fighting “The Kaiser,” an untouchable force of nature. Now he’s just Denys. A brother lost to his own guilt. Flawed, human, and in need of a guiding hand to bring him towards a redemption I think he’s willing to start

Aaaaaand of course he has reraise

I mean... that’s a decent argument. If Denys goes back to change the past, he actually ruins the future because he’s given Anne access to the Holy Pillar

And now the party gets the Kaiser job. Almost like a spiritual relinquishing of the role from Denys

I assumed we’d be taking Denys home to rest. Can’t help but notice we took his coat, though. Really shows off the fact that Yew cut off his entire right arm, not just his hand

Denys was always going to try and make a martyr of himself. It didn’t matter what he did, how bad his actions were, his final act, erasing himself from existence, was supposed to be his atonement. Now what does he do, living with the things he’s done and no easy end to absolve him of it?

It’s like the game thought I wouldn’t recognize Agnès‘s voice immediately

Agnès is willing to give him the chance to atone. Not forgive him outright, but a chance to earn that forgiveness. And why wouldn’t she? Agnès was once the puppet of a fairy herself, nearly driving the world to ruin with the goal of its salvation. Killing countless Duchy soldiers (and I know the game’s gonna act like the random encounter soldiers didn’t exist, but they did) in the name of her cause. Denys really is in the same position as Tiz, Agnès, Edea, and Ringabel were just two years ago

Denys really thinks all of his companions are dead, huh? “The only mercy I need is a quick death, so I may apologize face-to-face.” “Then come with me to the Sanctum.” We’re just gonna arrange a prison meet-and-greet with the other Glanz Empire higher-ups that we didn’t kill, just stuck in prison, and Denys’s gonna have a change of heart and join us, I can already see it coming

According to the Bestiary, Denys met Anne when the Great Chasm “disappeared” (where... did it go?), captured the Ba’al Diamante and seized the asterisks left behind in the crater, and then created the Skyhold using Diamante. So the Ba’al that the Sagitta thought they were firing on, and the one sealed within... is Diamante, which I thought was just the official name for the Skyhold when it appeared on the location intro card. I... I think I know what those rumbles from before may have been

Yew makes sure to note that everything he wrote was told to him by Denys, presumably off-screen. And there’s a little note that makes a similar point to what I did during the fight: his Bestiary entry is listed as Denys Geneolgia, not Kaiser Oblivion, because should anything happen, Yew wants him to be remembered not as the leader of the Glanz Empire, but as his beloved brother

“To meet those who sacrificed themselves for your cause... This is what you truly wish? Then let it be done!” I see you trying to be dramatic, Agnès, but let’s cut the man a break, yeah? Faking him out like this is just a bit mean. The look on his face is gonna be great, though

Yup! And Minette even got adopted with no jail time. Isn’t that great?

“I-I do not deserve...” Maybe not forgiveness, but no one has given you a second chance to atone yet. It’s about time we do

Okay, I know Braev was cutting his restraints, but it still looked like he slashed Denys across the back. Could you imagine if he had! “Grand Marshall! I meant cut his restraints!” “Oh. OH. Oh no. My apologies. I thought this was going somewhere else! Oh dear... someone call a healer! Nikolai!”

Family dinner! FAMILY DINNER! FAMILY DINNEEEEEER! Aw man, get in here, Agnès! It’s the whole dang team! Magnolia, Tiz, Edea, Yew, and Agnès all sharing some down time together is what I live for!

Aaaaaaand Agnès made it sad by asking if Magnolia’s gonna go home to the Moon when her work is done. Now Yew’s sad. And Magnolia’s sad

Denys, get in here! If the team’s willing to forgive and forget, well, I’ve been willing to with you for a while! Family dinner! Estranged older brothers and adoptive extradimensional aunts and all!

I am desperately in need of a reconciliation hug between Denys and Yew right now

“What do you say we go for a bath, Brother?” Or... you can make it weird, Yew. I feel like that’s a few steps past a hug

Just two bros chillin’ in a hot spring, five feet apart ‘cause they’re estranged siblings awkwardly attempting to reconnect

This is good for both of them, really. Just finally getting to chat it out, maybe air some grievances...

Denys never blamed Yew for what happened with his arm. It actually gave him the perfect opportunity to walk out on their father and never look back. One of his big regrets was that he never got to tell Yew that before he was forced to leave. He’s just glad they even have the opportunity to talk again. That he had the opportunity to finally tell his brother that he doesn’t have to bear that weight anymore

And now he’s giving relationship advice to his little bro... awww, that’s sweet, but I gotta wonder what Denys actually knows about romance. Like... at all

Denys’s just sitting here like “Oh this dense kid. It’s so obvious they belong together. Come on, Yew, confess. That’s gonna be my new sister-in-law, I can tell.”

Nothing like a GIANT FUCKING DEATH LASER IN THE SKY to ruin your nice chat with your brother, huh!?

Dammit, I knew Anne was suspiciously absent and yet I still overlooked her. I bet she used Sylvie to overload the Crystals and form the Holy Pillar

MMMMMMmmmmm Skyhold again. I’ve got... a bad feeling about what’s going to happen to Denys. Please don’t go Redemption Equals Death, please don’t go Redemption Equals Death he has so much potential...

Yew’s apologizing to Magnolia because she helped him repair his relationship with Denys, but he still hasn’t returned the favor in helping her defeat the Ba’al and save the Moon. God, I love this kid’s sense of honor

Oh, hey, confirmation that the Moon and Appleberry are still okay. At least until Anne does something again

I knew it. The Matriarch and Sylvie are here

Anne you fairy fuck get over here! I know you’re aware of my existence, you’re the one who asked me to play the original game!

“You’re here already? Not bad! You beat my estimate by fourteen minutes.” Not bad considering I took a day’s break before getting here. That estimate must have been pretty generous

She pulled an Airy on Sylvie and the Matriarch and convinced them to help her. Where the Fairy Flies, am I right?

“Denied!” Denys you ham this is supposed to be serious

Oh... I forgot that Anne sent Denys to the future instead of the past and he still remembers that

You didn’t realize she sent you to the wrong time!? How do you not notice the technology and architecture being way off?

She had no intention of sending him to the past. Of course not. Why would Airy’s sister have you invalidate all the work she had the player/Celestial do last game?

...Master?

Here we go. The freed Diamante, Ba’al that destroyed the Moon civilizations. And Magnolia’s freaking out, but her new family won’t have it! We avenge her people together!

Diamante looks freaking awesome. A diamond unicorn with a skeleton rider, with butterflies in her long, teal hair and shredded wings for arms.

And don’t think I haven’t noticed the background. A woman with a ponytail kneeling behind a chain-link fence, reaching her left hand out towards what appears to be a rocket ship flying off into the distance. The ring on her finger glinting every once in a while

A married woman left behind, longing to reach a ship... Vega...

Diamante, the diamond ring

Health doesn’t look too bad, but I’m worried about the 100% Mirror. Seems it even reflects physical attacks

It’s gone down to 60% after a round of attacks. Maybe I’ve just got to wear its shield down

It did... something to Tiz that prevents him from doing anything besides Default and Summon and brings its Mirror up for one more hit every turn, but this seems manageable. Turns out attack items count as hits to bring it down, so if I toss one out per turn it can’t do anything

I love the effect of the diamonds on the unicorn breaking away to reveal an electric interior

Reraise was to be expected at this point

They only make you fight it twice and it still revives at the end, but I think it’s poetic that I beat it while I had Magnolia’s theme playing thanks to her special being the second-to-last hit on it

Do what you did to the Moon? “Let the cleansing fires cover the world, and burn for three days and three nights!” Why so specific, Anne? It sounds like you’re quoting a Bible verse at me

You sound ridiculous, Anne. Tone the formality down a peg

“Yes, it is time I atone for my sins.” Denys don’t you fucking dare

Yew, do not give him the compass.

You are not taking this Ba’al to the end of time, young man! No! You aren’t allowed to pull a Redemption Equals Death on me

“I trust you. My sacrifice will not be in vain.” You don’t have to do this! I can keep this boss fight going forever! We weren’t even struggling! I’ve got the resources to keep trying!

Denys, please. You could be Party Member #5. You could have a well-written, non-copout redemption arc. Let’s think about this

God...

...dammit.

#bravely default #bravely second #liz liveblogs bravely second

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hypnoshatesme · 5 years ago

Text

Hit and Run

A couple of days had passed and Zero was getting bored in his cell. Most of the people guarding him until now had been no fun. Outside of the window in his cell the sky was darkening again and Zero sat up, leaning his back against the stone wall. It should be about time for the guard to change again. Zero could see the dark-haired lady that’d been staring daggers at him for the past hours shift at the sound of steps approaching.

Following her gaze, he was met with quite the view. The man approaching the cell was well-built and carried himself with an air of arrogance, posture flawless, his clothes so neat Zero had the urge to rip them to shreds. Crimson hair, redder than any Zero'd seen in Nohr, pulled up into a tight ponytail without a single stray strand to be seen. It was a stark contrast to his fair complexion, his eyes mirroring the vibrant colour, drawing Zero’s gaze to them.

The female guard finally left, exchanging a few ushered words with her companion before disappearing. The man took his place in front of the cell, every movement having something annoyingly fake, as if great thought and consideration went into making them as perfect as possible. Infuriating.

Tsubaki scanned the cell in front of him. In the far back, under the small window a man was sitting, leaning against the wall. A dirty smirk was playing on his lips as his gaze wandered over Tsubaki. It made Tsubaki uncomfortable, but he kept his features neutral. His hands tightened, ever so slightly, around the tray he was holding.

"And here I thought I had met all of you by now.", Niles said, looking into Tsubaki's eyes.

"You have gone through an impressive number of guards, yes, but certainly not all Hoshidan soldiers.", Tsubaki answered, holding the gaze.

They stared at each other in silence. Zero's right eye was covered under messy, white strands of hair, but Tsubaki caught glimpses of darkness in the fading light. The eye seemed to be missing.

A wide grin spread on Zero's face, teeth showing: "So, who did they chose to deal with me this time, hm?".

Tsubaki pondered for a moment: "As far as I am informed, you have yet to surrender even your name to us. It doesn't seem fair to give you mine, then.". Tsubaki was clearly quite satisfied with himself. Promising, Zero thought. He might have some fun with this new guard, after all.

"Very well, Mr. Perfect, if that's how you want to do it.", Zero said, grinning.

The satisfied look instantly went sour. He obviously hadn't thought as far as Zero using a nickname. It was Zero's turn to look quite happy with himself and he enjoyed the visible struggle of Tsubaki wrestling his expression back into a neutral mask. It only lasted a flicker of a moment, but Zero caught it, his grin widening.

Tsubaki noticed the self-satisfied look on the Nohrian's face and decided to look around the cell, so he could avoid the annoying expression. Tsubaki's eyes fell unto the lunch that had been left untouched in the same place it had been put by his guards. Tsubaki had heard that this particular captive didn't only refuse to answer any of the questions asked, but also to touch any of the food provided. He hadn't really believed it. It had been nearly two weeks by now, after all. And Zero definitely didn't look like he was starving. Tsubaki stooped down, replacing the bowl inside the cell with the one he had brought. He felt Zero's eyes following his every movement.

"I already told your friends, you are wasting your time and food like this.".

Tsubaki looked up: "Yes, I heard that you refuse to eat.".

Zero sighed and rolled his eye: "No, I don't refuse to eat. I simply don't eat.", he explained with a voice of somebody who was tired of explaining the same thing over and over.

Tsubaki raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"I live off blood, as most Nohrians do.".

Tsubaki frowned. He heard rumours about the creatures in Nohr who drank blood. It was a common fireplace horror story among the soldiers, but Tsubaki personally never considered it more than a story. Although the prisoner's voice did not betray a lie, the mischief in his eye made Tsubaki shrug the information of. He was probably playing with him.

Tsubaki replaced the tray inside with the one had brought, keeping an eye on the captive at all time. For somebody who hadn't eaten in so long he didn't look too bad. Tsubaki tried to catch any sort of reaction to the new food, but the Nohrian seemed unfazed, maybe slightly annoyed.

"You're just wasting it.", he was definitely annoyed.

"If you'd eat it, it wouldn't go to waste."

"I don't eat.".

They glared at each other in silence. Neither wanted to continue this discussion. Zero was more than tired of having to explain this to these people. Tsubaki was tired of what he assumed was a stupid joke. They didn't speak anymore for the rest of Tsubaki's shift. Zero kept his eye on Tsubaki, though, and Tsubaki held his gaze.

Zero heard Mr. Perfect's voice before seeing him the next time latter had the pleasure of being on guarding duty. He was accompanied by the girl who Zero had met on his second day. She was easily irritable, quite feisty and a joy to annoy. They seemed to be rather familiar with each other from the easy tone of conversation. Even Mr. Perfect sounded somewhat relaxed.

He didn't look like it, Zero noticed when the two came into his line of sight. He was still holding himself like he had a massive stick shoved up his ass, despite his tone being surprisingly easy-going. The woman was looking visibly on edge when she saw Zero. He gave her a brilliant grin.

Tsubaki walked up to Hinata, who was guarding the Nohrian: "Hana says you promised her sparring practice today.".

"Wasn't it her turn to guard him now…?", Hinata frowned, remembering Hana complaining about that very fact a day ago.

Tsubaki sighed: "I was tired of hearing her complain, took her shift. So, enjoy your practice.".

Hinata beamed and thanked him before walking up to Hana and leaving the dungeon with her, waving Tsubaki goodbye. Tsubaki watched them go.

"Don't you ever let go of that prim and proper stance of yours?", came the voice from the cell.

He sounded somewhat tired but Tsubaki just found that even more irritating. He sighed, turning towards the Nohrian. Daylight was seeping into the cell from the small window and the prisoner was sitting in the same spot as the last time Tsubaki had seen him, but instead of lazily leaning against the wall in a slouch, he was pressed against the stone wall.

"How is that a problem? You've apparently been sitting in the same spot for two days.".

Zero grinned: "I assure you that when I'm not confined to a cell, I move plenty. You, however, seem the kind of guy to keep that stiff demeanour when nobody's watching. Am I wrong?".

Tsubaki decided to ignore the question: "What makes you stick to the one spot in the cell, then, if that's the case? Is it the most comfortable one?".

"In a sense…Your daylight is quite intense. I'm trying to stay out of it.", Zero said while leaning his head against the wall and looking up at the light creeping into the cell from the window.

Tsubaki raised an eyebrow. He wasn't sure if he understood what Zero was getting at. He had heard of Nohr being a rather dark place with long nights, but he never assumed they didn't have daylight.

"What do you mean? You don't have sunlight in Nohr?".

Zero closed his eyes: "We do. But not this…bright. This…it's like tiring to be exposed to. And I'm already low on energy.".

Tsubaki considered that. The prisoner sounded exhausted, drenched, tired. He seemed to be speaking the truth. Tsubaki was wondering if anyone had been informed about this situation. He was fairly sure his liege would not approve of having the prisoner suffer unnecessarily.

"I will tell Lady Sakura, I am sure had she been aware of your discomfort she would have had the window covered up.", he ended up saying.

Zero opened his eyes and looked at Tsubaki, a mixture of surprise and amusement on his face: "Oh, I wasn't aware the comfort of your prisoners is a concern you have here in Hoshido.".

Tsubaki pressed his lips together: "And what is that supposed to mean? Are you telling me the treatment you have been given here is in some way inferior to whatever you do to prisoners in Nohr?".

Zero grinned, looking right at his guard: "We don't really take prisoners much so I wouldn't know.".

His tone made it clear that he didn't mean that Nohr used diplomacy to solve their problems instead of prisons. Mr. Perfect was clearly disgusted by that implication and Zero chuckled. It was an obvious lie, he had quite the insight into Nohrian prisons, from both sides of the bars even, but considering the negative opinion Hoshidans seemed to have of Nohr it was an easy game to play into their prejudices. Delightful.

"You again? You just can't go very long without me, can you?", were the words that greeted him when Tsubaki approached the cell again only two days later. The rumour of Tsubaki taking other people's shifts had spread and people kept asking him to take their shifts. And he, being who he was, of course couldn't refuse. He might also be a little curious about the prisoner who had, it seemed, actually moved to slouch against a different wall now that the window had been covered up.

"It had more to do with the fact that nobody else seems to have the patience to deal with you.", Tsubaki answered, "I see you have taken full advantage of your new-found mobility.", he added.

A rough chuckle left Zero's lips at that. He had been rather surprised when somebody did come in to cover the window the same evening Mr. Perfect had talked about it. He did actually walk around a little, but he quickly noticed that he was just too tired to keep the pacing up for too long.

"But you have enough patience to do so? I guess patience is a virtue that should be part of the repertoire of somebody as perfect as you are.". "You sound like you're sure you'll be able to change that.".

"Oh, I do get told I excel at even making people with nerves of steel feel uncomfortable.", Zero taunted.

Tsubaki struggled to suppress a grin at that: "Well, you are free to try.".

And trying he did. Tsubaki ended up on guard duty frequently, more and more people asking him to take their shifts and, as long as Tsubaki wasn't busy, he agreed to it. And the prisoner didn't let any opportunity escape to try to get under Tsubaki's skin. Latter took pride in giving him as little a reaction as possible, while at the same time trying to get the Nohrian to say something about Nohr or himself. He was about as successful with that as the prisoner was with getting Tsubaki to get uncomfortable enough to refuse guarding duty. In a weird way, Tsubaki started looking forward to his shifts.

When Tsubaki arrived at the cell in the afternoon about a month later he was met with a sight that he, by now, had become used to. Zero lying on the floor, rolled up, facing the wall, barely moving. Without watching intently, one could assume he was dead. His state had been steadily worsening, his voice was getting weaker and starting to lose all bite. But somehow, he looked much worse than the last time Tsubaki had been on guard only a couple days before. Glancing to the side, Tsubaki saw the tray with food, untouched. He sighed.

"You look awful.", Tsubaki said and watched Zero for any kind of reaction.

All he got was a weak mumble.

"Why won't you eat? You're starving.".

"I already told you, it's not food that I need. It wouldn't help me at all.", came the answer, barely audible.

He sounded annoyed, but his voice was too weak to really carry it across and gave up completely halfway into the sentence. Tsubaki remembered what he had been told the first time he had asked about the food. He had just thought of it as a joke. After all, the mirth never really left the Nohrian's voice, no matter what he was talking about. But he had been starting to reconsider his judgement in the passing weeks. The prisoner had ceased to move, his voice was losing all edge and he had been talking less and less in general. Tsubaki didn't want to admit it, but he missed their verbal swordplay. At least it never got boring.

Tsubaki was worried. Either he was dealing with the most stubborn person he ever faced, or the prisoner had actually told the truth and what he needed was blood. Tsubaki stared at the lump pressed against the backwall of the cell, pondering.

Minutes passed before he spoke up again: "How much blood do you need?".

Zero's head lifted slightly from the floor, and he mumbled: "Why, are you going to volunteer?".

He intended for it to sound teasing, but it just fell flat with how exhausted he sounded. He sighed, pressing his cheek against the stone floor again. He would've liked to properly get on Mr. Perfect's nerves, but he was too tired. He sighed, closing his eyes. It was hard enough to hold onto a straight thought, much less to actually voice any of them.

Zero started hearing some sort of shuffling noise from where the guard's voice had been coming from before. Zero furrowed his brows, shifted in his place so he could catch a glimpse of what was going on. He moved slowly, struggling to open his heavy eyelids again. When his eyes managed to focus, he saw the guard rolling up his sleeve and pushing his now naked arm through the bars.

Zero wasn't processing what was happening. What was the guy doing? His thoughts were foggy, but he distantly started to remember the conversation that had been going on. Slowly, Zero got to his feet, holding on to the wall for support. His gaze was fixed on the white, bare skin that was inside his cell now. It felt like the first time in a long time his eyes were actually focussing on something. The blinding white skin. Zero couldn't take his eyes off it.

He stumbled to the bars of the cell with urgency. He nearly fell, but he did not care, just needed to reach that arm. He did nearly stumble into the bars, but his hands clasped around the arm before falling to his knees, dragging the guard along with him to the floor without registering it. Zero took hold of the arm in a vice grip, biting down into the soft skin, sharp teeth breaking skin. Zero didn't even notice the redhead twitching from the sudden pain, didn't hear the low hiss. Zero didn't care, he was starving, and the warm blood coating his tongue was all his mind could focus on.

Tsubaki was looking down at the Nohrian, his forehead pressed against the cold bars of the cell. The sharp pain of the bite subsided into a dull discomfort when the prisoner started drinking. The grip on his arm was bruising, nails biting into his skin. Slowly, the pain and discomfort started giving way to a warm feeling, leaving Tsubaki light-headed. Somewhere in the back of Tsubaki's mind he was aware that this might be his end, but his thoughts were too slow, too dense to focus on it. He leaned his forehead against the cold bars, enjoying the chill of the metal against his heated skin, his eyes trying to focus on the white hair tickling his arm, and failing.

Zero, on the other hand, was starting to finally be able to think again. He felt the strength returning to his limps, his thoughts focussing. He was aware of the situation he was in, more aware than he had been ever since he was thrown into this cell. This was the perfect opportunity for him to escape. There was no way the guard could escape Zero's grip right now, he was probably already getting sluggish from the venom. It would be easy to make him faint and then making his way out of the cell, the dungeon, Hoshido.

Zero looked up from under his lashes. The guard was half-kneeling, his face pressed against the bars of the cell. His eyes were glazed, half-lidded, his lips slightly parted. And something inside Zero made him hesitate, rethink his plan. Red eyes were moving sluggishly when they met Zero's blue one, a second of recognition showed on the guard's face, before the gaze went soft again, looking straight through Zero. Zero let go of his guard's arm, taking a couple steps back.

His guard didn't react at all, first, eyes still focussed on where Zero had been a moment ago, watching the blood drip from the wound, running down the pale skin of his arm. It took a couple seconds before he seemingly noticed that Zero wasn't there anymore, before he slowly pulled his arm back out of the cell, clasping the still bleeding wound.

"It…will bleed for a little longer.", Zero mumbled, watching his guard slowly looking into the cell, eyes meeting Zero's.

Tsubaki was trying to make sense of what the prisoner was saying through the fog in his mind. Blood. Right. He carefully got up, leaning against the bars for support. Healing supplies were always kept around the cells, for emergencies. Slowly, he got some bandages from one of the boxes at the far end of the room and sluggishly, started to wrap it around the biting wound.

Zero watched his every, painfully slow, movement. It was frustrating to watch. He might've drunken a bit too much. What he was seeing was a far cry from the usual perfection, the graceful movements he had come to associate with this particular Hoshidan. In a way, it was fascinating to witness.

Zero watched as the guard walked back to the cell, slouching slightly, clearly needing all his attention to not stumble over his own feet. He sat down, leaning his back against the wall right next to the cell. Carefully, he pulled his sleeve back down, covering the bandaged wound. His brow furrowed in concentration. Zero walked towards him, leaning against the same wall, just on the other side of the bars.

Neither of them talked for the rest of Tsubaki's shift. Slowly, the fog in Tsubaki's mind cleared, his thoughts started to focus again, and he started becoming aware of the dull arch in his arm again. He looked down at it. Why had he stopped? It would've been the perfect moment to try to get out of this cell. Tsubaki glanced at the prisoner, who was nearly sitting next to him. He was staring right ahead.

They didn't speak about the drinking incident. Tsubaki continued frequently guarding the Nohrian and they continued like they did before it, Zero now being alive enough to not miss any opportunity to make some kind of inappropriate comment. It was as if it never happened. In fact, none of the other guards seemed to notice any change in Zero.

"How come none of my allies have commented on you suddenly coming back to life?", Tsubaki asked him one day, finally confronting the Nohrian.

Zero took a long moment before answering, picking his words carefully: " None of your friends are as entertaining.", he smirked.

It was the truth and a thinly veiled lie at the same time. Tsubaki looked at him like he was seeing right through it, but only rolled his eyes as a reaction. He was quite thankful for Zero keeping his change in attitude a secret. Tsubaki already was constantly being asked about whether he had managed to get any kind of information out of the Nohrian. Surely, he would've been the first one being asked about the prisoner's changes had they been noticed by anyone else.

Zero slowly opened his eyes. It was already quite dark in his cell, he probably slept longer than usual. His eye fell on Tsubaki who apparently was yet again on guarding duty. But to Zero’s astonishment, he wasn’t standing, wasn’t even facing the inside of the cell. Instead, he was sitting, back against the bars, legs crossed. He seemed to be looking at his hands that were resting in his lap. Zero raised an eyebrow, a sly grin playing at his lips.

He approached soundlessly, never losing sight of Tsubaki’s back. The guard looked exhausted. His shoulders were slumped and Zero could barely tell if he was awake. He wondered what had happened to the Hoshidan to let him let his guard down this much. This was a far cry from his usual self.

Sitting down behind the redhead, Zero's hand found their way to Tsubaki’s shoulders through the bars, long fingers slowly kneading the stiff muscles. To Zero’s amusement, Tsubaki nearly jumped out of his skin. But Zero didn’t let go, his grip tightening to prevent the Hoshidan from getting away from the bars. Surprisingly, Tsubaki didn’t try to get away. He moved his head to the side, only giving Zero a glance before staring at the wall before him, his body relaxing slightly into Zero's touch.

Zero took that as an invitation to continue his massage, his hand slowly working out the knots in Tsubaki’s shoulders, his eye never leaving what he could see of Tsubaki’s face. He watched Tsubaki’s jaw relax slowly, his whole body giving into Zero’s ministrations. Zero caught crimson eyelashes flutter when he worked against an especially stubborn knot, saw red lips part in what was probably a silent sigh. It was mesmerizing to watch, every small detail unbelievably graceful.

Zero blinked, looking at his own hands instead, so very dark compared to Tsubaki’s pale neck. His thumbs were working circles into the back of Tsubaki’s neck, just below the hairline. A smirk spread on his lips.

“Aren’t you letting your guard down a bit too much?”, Zero leered, breaking the silence.

Gradually, Zero’s icy fingers closed around Tsubaki’s slender neck, his thumbs never stopping their ministration. He didn’t apply any pressure and Tsubaki didn’t move. But Zero still noticed Tsubaki’s breathe hitch ever so slightly. Tsubaki's muscles tensed up again and a malicious grin spread across Zero's face. But that was the extent of Tsubaki’s reaction. He didn’t try to get away and his hands didn’t grab Zero’s arms to pull them away. Zero was surprised. Was Tsubaki too exhausted to react?

“You know I could just snap that pretty neck of yours now, right?”, he whispered, voice honeyed as his grip around Tsubaki’s neck tightening slightly. Tsubaki suppressed a shudder. He was well aware of that. His body was panicking, was screaming at him to get away from the danger on the other side of the cell, away from the icy fingers that were slowly closing around his throat. He balled his hands into fists.

Instead of trying to get away, however, Tsubaki answered, voice controlled and calm: “You had an easy opportunity to end my life not too long ago and yet here I am.", a pause, as Tsubaki caught his breath against the tightening grip around his neck, "Why, actually?”.

Why. That was a good question. Zero had intended to escape. As soon as the haze of hunger was gone, he knew it was the perfect opportunity for him to finally leave this place. It would have been so easy. Thinking back just made him furious. He had stopped thinking rationally when he looked up. Suddenly, all his mind was filled with was half-lidded, red eyes, red lashes, starkly contrasting the perfect, white skin. Pale lips, slightly parted, a stray red strand of hair stuck to the corner of them, like a brushstroke of red paint on a white canvas. His grip was tightening around Tsubaki's throat without him realising, not even registering the quickened pulse under his fingertips, the gasps escaping the Hoshidan's lips.

Zero didn't know why he didn't do it. He had been wondering about it ever since. A particularly loud, wheezing breath from Tsubaki made him snap back to reality. And he stared, for a moment, just stared at the waterfall of red hair finding its way into the cell through the bars. He hated him. Zero let go of Tsubaki's neck, jumping to his feet and walking back to the backwall of the cell. He didn't want to look at the Hoshidan, didn't want to deal with him now. His thoughts were racing, incomprehensible. He lay down and rolled up, facing the wall. He could hear the guard coughing, filling his lungs with air again. He closed his eyes. He could picture how the Hoshidan must look right now, hair slightly mussed, cheeks dusted in red, more red to go with his hair, his eyes, probably watering now, sharp again, not glassy like that night. Zero wished it would stop. He wished he didn't see red every time he closed his eyes.

When Tsubaki had finally stopped gasping for air and his heartbeat had calmed, he got up to his feet, dusting himself off. He looked at him, curled up in the same position he had been weeks ago, before Tsubaki let him drink. Covering the window hadn't really motivate him to use the space more. Or maybe he got too used to that spot. Maybe it was because he was used to play dead when anyone else was on guarding duty. Tsubaki was pretty sure he would be playing dead for the rest of his own shift today, too. That suited him well. He certainly had had enough interaction with the Nohrian for today.

For a moment, he thought the Nohrian would go through with it. Just like when he was drinking. For a moment, Tsubaki was sure he met his end. To his own surprise, that did not really fill him with much emotion. Unsettling.

Zero didn't see the redheaded guard for a while after that incident. Maybe he had finally managed to repulse him, just like the other ones. He felt accomplished, but also missed the company, missed trying to find the right buttons to push. It took all his control to not stop his act of playing dead and trying to rile some of the other guards. Zero was bored.

It had been over a week before Tsubaki entered the dungeon again. He was met with the familiar picture of the white-haired prisoner lying facing wall, back to the bars. Nothing seemed changed. Nobody had complained to Tsubaki about him since he was back so he assumed that the Nohrian continued playing dead.

"Have you enjoyed your break from me?", he decided to say to break the silence.

The body shifted, turning around to face Tsubaki. He was starting to look tired again. But mostly he looked surprised.

"I thought I had finally managed to get rid of you", he mumbled, rolling his eye in overplayed annoyance.

"You need to try a little harder to achieve that."

"Harder than attempting to kill you?", Zero raised an eyebrow

"If you had truly attempted such a thing I would not be standing here right now, would I?"

Silence. They glared at each other, icy blue and blood red relentlessly staring at the other. Tsubaki could feel his skin tingling with anticipation. Would there be a retort to what he said? He knew that the Nohrian hated not having the last word. But he also seemed to have a deep distaste for this particular topic. He was surprised that the Nohrian had even brought it up in the first place. Maybe the exhaustion was getting to his head already.

Zero broke eye contact first, rolling over to lie on his back: "So did you just decide to take a break from guarding duty? "

"I was sent on a scouting mission and it dragged on a little.", he stated.

Zero made a humming noise. "I guess war is unavoidable."

"What gives you that idea?"

"Your tone."

Tsubaki frowned. He had been sure his tone did not betray his anxieties. Could it be that some of his concern over the worsening tension still managed to slip through? He prided himself in being able to control his tone well. He didn't like the idea of the prisoner being able to read him so easily.

"You don't sound very happy about it", he ended up saying after a moment.

Zero sighed, sitting up and leaning his head against the wall, looking up: "I know that you Hoshidans believe that Nohr is a place full of slaughter-hungry people that'll jump on every opportunity to start a fight. If it were the war would have started a long time ago already. You can always find a reason to start a fight if you want to, so why wait so long?"; he closed his eye, "My speciality is assassination and others quick jobs. Waking up to a long battle every day to mend my wounds every night only to have them ripped open again in the next fight doesn't get me excited, no."

He opened his eye again, looking directly at Subaki, taking his tall figure in. He could imagine him on the battlefield, an exceptional fighter for others to look up to, to aspire to be like. More pressure on him to keep up this ridiculous facade. Tsubaki just looked at him, fighting the confusion showing on his face. "I'm just following orders. Much like you are, I assume. Considering the look on your face the idea of war doesn't fill you with glee either.", Zero decided to add when the silence kept dragging on.

Tsubaki still didn't say anything. The silence continued, both of them dwelling in their own thoughts. Tsubaki's about what Zero had said and Zero about the fact that he needed to get out of Hoshido before he became too weak to move again. He had been stalling for some kind of distraction, an event, just something that would elevate his chance of escape a little. But he was starting to think he would have to take the risk.

The desired distraction did end up coming. It took another week or so, Zero couldn't tell the passage of time in his darkened cell. When the alarms rang, his guard, one of the footsoldiers that all looked the same to Zero, took a surprised step back, getting just close enough to the bars for Zero to knock him out. Picking the lock still came naturally to Zero and, within seconds, he emerged from the dungeon. He was hit with bright sunlight, cursing under his breath as his eye closed in pain. Coming back into not just any light, but the relentless sunlight of Hoshido was horrible. Who the fuck was attacking the castle in broad fucking daylight? He squinted his eye open slightly and started searching for a way out of the castle grounds.

Thankfully, the guards around the castle seemed to be much concerned about keeping anyone from coming in than from getting out of the castle grounds. It didn't take too long until Zero had managed to sneak out and was on his way back to Norhr. He was running through a forest, thankful for the shade the trees were providing. His eye had get used to the light by now, but the sun was still giving him a headache. It was draining him of the little energy he still had left, so quickly that Zero was starting to wonder if he could even make it.

He was out of breath and slowing. The fighting noises were now barely audible, he was a good distance from the castle. He had seen some flyers when he had been closer, but now there seemed to be no fighting going on anywhere close. Zero came to a stop, nearly toppling over. Breathing. He needed to keep breathing. His head was pounding, and his vision was starting to blur. He closed his eye. He couldn't tell if he was dizzy from the lack of blood or the punishing sunlight. It didn't really matter. He had to push through.

Tsubaki was sure he had seen somebody move when flying over this part of the forest. Very sure. He had had to land his Pegasus nearby due to the density of the trees rendering it impossible to land where he thought he saw the person running to. Carefully, he made his way through the forest, naginata ready in his hand. Breathing. He could hear some sort of heavy breathing after walking for a while. He followed the sound to a tree somebody was leaning against. They were slumped forward slightly, face covered by hair, but the prison robe was a dead giveaway. Tsubaki raised his naginata, drawing his eyebrows together in surprise and confusion.

"What are you doing here?", he said, taking a couple steps towards the Nohrian.

Zero froze. He hadn't heard anyone approaching over the pounding headache. When he raised his head, he was looking at the sharp end of a naginata. When his eye managed to focus, saw that the person holding the naginata was no other but Mr. Perfect. Zero relaxed a little.

"I'm escaping.", he said, looking directly into the Hoshidan's face, forcing a grin.

Tsubaki rolled his eyes at that. The Nohrian looked so much worse than the last time Tsubaki had guarded him and the pained grin wasn't going to cover that up. He tightened his grip on his naginata.

"I'm can't let you do that.".

"Why not? You didn't seem too keen on keeping me in that cell in the past.", Zero returned, his grin now a little more genuine.

Tsubaki's lips formed a tight line. He couldn't really disagree, of course. He personally didn't want to see the Nohrian rotting in the cell again. He lowered his naginata slightly when Zero took a step towards him.

"You could finally stop wasting your time guarding me, too. It's really a win-win situation.", Zero continued, sidestepping the naginata and getting closer. Mr. Perfect was obviously not even going to try to fight him on that. After giving Zero more than one chance to escape, there was no point in trying to make something up. He wasn't even trying to break eye contact. Zero smirked.

Tsubaki didn't budge, staring at zero approaching. He didn't try to stop him. He really did look like hell, sickly pale skin glinting with sweat. His hair was sticking to his forehead, but he didn't seem bothered. He looked somewhat manic, his eye full of the usual mischief, but also fevered, desperate. It was a look Tsubaki hadn't seen on him before, and it put him on edge. He didn't notice stepping back when Zero was close enough to touch him. Zero just followed suit and another step later Tsubaki's back met a tree trunk. Zero didn't give him much time to register it, though, stepping into the Hoshidan's personal space, blocking his way with his own body. Tsubaki was still holding the Nohrian's gate. The closeness made his pulse accelerate.

Zeros hands found their way to Tsubaki's shoulders, resting there, observing the Hoshidan's reaction to it, looking for anything that would tell him he'd try to fight or run. Tsubaki returned his look, eyes revealing racing thoughts, uncertainty, curiosity, intrigue. He was waiting for what Zero would do next. Zero wouldn't let him wait any longer as he closed the space between them, pressing his lips against the Hoshidan's in one swift motion.

The kiss was desperate and hungry, Zeros hands clutching Tsubaki's shoulders pushing him flush against the tree with his full body. Tsubaki didn't return the kiss initially, taken by surprise by the sudden assault. But he also did not push the Nohrian away. He had wondered about kissing the prisoner, had wanted it. But he did not consider it realistic, didn't think it'd happen, even with the chapped lips moving against his.

Tsubaki's hands twitched, wanting to take hold of the Nohrian pressed against him, wanting to bury his hand in the matted white locks. But he held back, tightening the grip on his naginata instead and balling his others hand into a fist at his side. He didn't trust this, not fully. Tentatively, he started to kiss the Nohrian back.

Zeros hands were snaking their way up to Tsubaki's face, coming to rest on his cheeks. He was making sure Tsubaki didn't move his head as he sucked in Tsubaki's lower lip and Tsubaki knew it was coming then, braved himself against the pain.

Zero run his tongue along Tsubaki's lip, looking up at him through his lashes. The Hoshidan's cheeks were dusted light red, but his eyes were closed. They fluttered open as he flinched when Zero bit down on his lip. His eyes met Zero's, but not with the look of betrayal or disappointment Zero had expected. He looked calm, much like he did when he let Zero drink weeks before.

He had expected this. Something about that riled Zero up and he tightened his grip on Tsubaki's face, pushing his head against the rough tree bark before lowering his gaze again, starting to draw more blood from Tsubaki's lip and drinking.

Tsubaki didn't move. He could feel the familiar numbness spreading from his lip. The pain in his lip turned dull and soon enough he barely registered what Zero was doing. The grip on his face felt like the ghost of a touch soon, his eyes unable to focus properly. His thoughts started fogging and he started leaning more into the tree, his body feeling heavy.

Zero held him upright as he started to slump against the tree, eagerly drinking. He wasn't even tasting it. Not until he felt his throbbing headache calm, his body slowly regaining energy. That's when he calmed down, adjusting his grip on Tsubaki's face so his nails weren't digging into the soft skin. He looked up once more, his own gaze more piercing than before. He was met with Tsubaki's glazed eyes.

Everybody had a different reaction to Zero's venom. Tsubaki, he had already observed the first time, seemed to be out of it pretty quickly compared to most others Zero has drunk from. Fascinating and very handy in a situation like the one he currently found himself in. He couldn't allow for anyone following him, couldn't have Tsubaki even trying to. And he would make sure that would be the case.

Tsubaki already seemed to be in no shape to do so, his body slack between Zero's and the tree. But Zero had to made sure. A voice in his head urged him to kill the Hoshidan. After all, the best way to avoid being followed was to kill the follower.

He slowly let go of Tsubaki's lip, carefully helping the taller man into a sitting position, propping him against the tree. Blood was trickling down his chin and unto his immaculate clothes. He didn't seem to notice, empty eyes trained on the floor, body slumped against the tree, a far cry from his usual stiff posture. Zero should really kill him. He sighed, licking his lips. Fact was that Zero didn't want to kill him and he didn't have the time to ponder any longer. He gave Tsubaki a last glance, telling himself that he would probably regret this.

But he'd face that whenever the time came. Now he turned around and ran.

#fire emblem fates #fe14 #fe niles #fe zero #fe subaki #fe tsubaki #vampire au #some blood #niles/subaki #zero/tsubaki

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